Eldevon
by isis-tower
Summary: After being rejected by the Jedi order a group of padawans discover the Jedi's deepest secret. A secret locked away in a city that does not exist. IN PROGRESS
1. Chapter 1

Eldevon

REJECTED

"Well" I thought to myself as my eyes attempted to adjust to the darkness, "this sucks." Of course we couldn't get a nice transport, a decent ship with a comfortable interior, no we were stuck with this heap. The first thing you noticed when you walked onboard was the smell. A hideous odor that wasn't overly bad but so overpowering you wondered if you would ever be rid of the stench. The ship itself was small and dimly lit; don't mistake it for a "homely" sort of atmosphere, if you wanted to call it anything it would be more of a journey into the internals of a trash compactor. The floor was littered with trash and looked as though the owner of the vessel either lacked any form of domestic ability or was blind and without a nose.

I settled down into what I believed to be a seat and glanced around the interior. The passenger bay was simply an empty compartment with fold out seats along the walls. The whole interior was a disgusting rust orange whether from paint or from actual rust who could tell?

Jais entered the ship after me, she refused to be the first one in, a look of shock and disgust covered her face, had I not been so appalled myself I might have found it funny. She fiddled unconsciously with her pony tail as she looked around the ship, running her fingers through her dark hair. Gron walked in behind Jais, his large, heavy figure filling most of the narrow entry way. He glanced around casually and plopped down in the seat across from me, happily munching on something. Jais managed to get over her shock and sat down beside me, which I did not oppose. The rest of the team piled in, some of them I knew: Kren an incredible duelist who rarely did his homework, Haron the youngest of the bunch, and Shain the only other girl, the rest I didn't recognize. Ten in all, no one said a word.

The ships engines started, believe me we were all aware of it when they did. The noise was deafening. The whole ship rattled as it rose from the platform into the skies of Coruscant. As soon as we cleared the atmosphere the noise from the engines dimmed down. People glanced around the room but still no one spoke. There were only two windows and the room was rather cramped. The silence made the room seem that much smaller, I wanted nothing but to be out of there. Out of the windows I could barely make out the engines of the other ships in our convoy. Four ships in all, my guess: everyone on board the other ships felt exactly like we did, and they all sat in stone cold silence.

It was unnerving. A deafening silence, though no spoke you could sense everyone screaming inside. Everyone one feeling the same chill, the same disappointment, the same bitterness. All I could her was Jais' steady breathing beside me. The sound started soft and gentle but soon it seemed to fill my head. It was like someone was pounding on my head with a hammer. I tried to clear my head, meditate like the masters had taught us to. I had to calm down or I was going to rip myself apart.

As the ship made the jump to hyperspace the lights began to flicker, then died. Apparently the ship couldn't run the lights and the hyperspace drive at the same time. I had heard it was a common problem before Ion drives had become standard. That placed the ship somewhere between archaic and ancient. All I could see were the trails of stars as they passed by my window. Eventually you could hear snoring, it had to be Gron, and some other random ruffles as kids tried to get to sleep. Jais' breathing slowed as she drifted off into sleep. But sleep was the last thing I could do.

My head was exploding with thoughts, "how could they do this? Why me? Why? Why? Why?" What had I done wrong? The Jedi temple had a rule, we all knew it, but at the same time we never thought about it until it got down to the last minute. Padawans came in as infants and trained with a lightsaber as a normal child would be trained to walk, the order was their life, literally. All the students knew though, if a Jedi master didn't pick you as their padawan by your twelfth birthday then you were too old. You would be cast out from the temple and sent to farming planets. Someone discovered that force powers could grow crops and they had not let that discovery go unnoticed. These rejects served out the rest of their lives growing wheat and corn when they could have been out crossing sabers with the infamous Sith. No one wanted it to happen to them, and no one believed it would. But somehow, here we all were, four ships full of rejects. It hurt to think it and it sickened you to say the word aloud, in fact I hadn't managed to muster up the strength to speak it yet, but regardless that's what we were: rejects.

The Jedi masters assured us that it was still honorable. We were valuable and would still serve the republic. But growing crops was not what we envisioned as true service. We wanted to tour the galaxy; I wanted to tour the galaxy.

What had I done wrong? As far as I could tell I was a good student. I never broke the rules and I always studied. Sure I was called a nerd sometimes, but always knowing the answer is an acceptable trade-off for a few jokes. Sure I wasn't perfect, I always past my classes, but that didn't mean all of them I passed with flying colors. I hated biology, I didn't care what I was made of, as long as it was there and it was working I was fine. I practiced in the dueling ring as often as anyone else, sure I wasn't the top of the charts but I could hold my own against all but the elite. My saber skills were weak but what I lacked in that I made up for in force powers. Who needed to swing a lightsaber when you could swing a wall? Master Windu had said that to me early on, I took it to heart. I tried as hard as I could to better myself, training, studying, training, studying, I worked endlessly. As far as I could tell I had done everything right, so why was I rejected?

Thoughts swarmed inside my head. I reached out to the force as best I could. Tried to center myself, to calm myself down. Images of the temple flashed in my head, the 1000 fountains, the map room, the arena. All these places had brought me peace but now the though of never being there again only hurt more. My thoughts wandered, I was walking through the temple hallways, sitting in the cafeteria eating with my friends… I had to stop, it hurt to much to think about it.

I felt a gentle breath on my shoulder, Jais was still fast asleep. I hated to think that she had been rejected as well but, at the same time, I was glad she was here. Even though she wasn't conscious her presence seemed to bring me some comfort. Her unique force signature radiated warmth and peace. My stomach started to stop turning. Slowly I began to drift into sleep.

My half-closed eyes snapped wide open. Something was wrong, a ripple in the force. Something bad was about to happen. BOOM! Before I could finish my thought our ship came to an instant stop as it was yanked violently out of hyperspace. The whole room was turned on its end as the ship jerked and rolled. Everyone was held in their seats by their restraining harnesses but you'd be amazed at how much moving you can do even when you're tied down. I reached out in the force. It was like drawing a picture in your mind, granted the best you can get were blurry shapes. In the center were four glowing masses, all the padawans were alert now and probably all doing exactly what I was doing sending out huge and very visible waves of force energy. Small dark shapes swarmed the larger ones. I tried to focus on the small ships but something was different about them, they were there, but at the same time they weren't. They had no force signature but instead they seemed to be an emptiness, a vacuum, a hole in the force. I had never felt anything like that, everyone had a unique force signature, me, Jais, Gron, Master Windu, everyone. But these… these were something else.

Everyone around the small compartment began to tighten their harnesses, check for emergency gear, and strain to look out of the two small windows. Everyone asked the same questions, "What's going on?" "What are those ships?" and "did they just shoot at us". Well as blaster bolts and cannon rounds flashed past the windows the last question became painfully answerable, while the previous two remained a mystery. As bolts passed the window the cabin would be illuminated for a split second with red or green light. The ship jerked and shook with every round that hit the hull. White lights zipped all around outside as our ships returned fire. It was an incredible display both through the window and in the force image. I had never been in a starfight before. And yes, I have to admit it, I was scared.

Soon enough the question was asked, I was sure everyone was thinking it but it was Shain who finally vocalized it, "Are they pirates?" Usually when Padawans traveled the galaxy they traveled with Jedi masters who knew how to evade space pirates so I had never actually seen a pirate ship. Space pirates scoured the galaxy for unsuspecting vessels that hopefully carried valuable cargo. Some gangs even attacked ships for simply crossing their "turf".

No one could answer Shain, no one knew. Some of the faces were scared, some maintained the serenity Jedi were supposed to keep. Jais was one of them. But underneath, in the force they were just as scared as everyone else. A ship's wing passed by the window, a sleek, armed wing. I knew a little about ships, enough to recognize that this ship could enter a planets atmosphere and to know that this was a fighter. Oddly there were no scorch marks or blaster holes; the wing was clean and new. I expected a pirate vessel to be a little more torn up.

On the wing was a marking, it was shaped like a flame. As soon as I looked at it, it wasn't like I was just seeing it; I could almost feel it imbedding itself in my mind, the image burning into the tissue. It felt so odd it sent chills down my spine. The image was locked in my mind, I couldn't shake it off.

"Kadrin? Kadrin, are you alright?" The image shattered as Jais' voice brought me back to attention.

"Yeah… yeah I'm ok…."

Suddenly an incredibly bright flash blocked out the entire scene in both windows. I couldn't see anything now, just white. I focused again on the images in the force. Those dark shapes were now all around us and we were moving away from the other ships. The three remaining ships weren't moving just staying there. Then they turned, and they were gone.


	2. Chapter 2

WELCOME?

The white glow continued to block my vision. My mind was becoming so tired as well, I couldn't hold the image any longer. I had to let it go. As the shapes faded from my mind I slipped into complete blindness, at least to what was going on around me. The lights in the cabin flickered back to life. Still everyone was quiet. Everyone looking around, watching, waiting. What was going on? Who knew, I certainly didn't. The ship began to rock and shake. The lights began to flicker, we were entering atmosphere. We were about to make planetfall. Were there any planets around here, I didn't know, heck I didn't know where I was, I could be over Kashik now for all I knew. The rumbling intensified. I tired to look around the cabin but my head was shaking so violently it was hard to keep my eyes on one thing.

I felt Jais' hand reach out and grip mine. My stomach started to turn again, it wasn't the feeling of fear or hurt this time though, it was something different. I wanted to hold her hand, to comfort her, but I was afraid, embarrassed. I just let her hold onto my hand as I gripped the hand rest. My stomach never settled, all through me I felt this excitement, but also this fear. I suddenly felt like a little child, shy and embarrassed. I tried to push it out of my head. Force it into the back of my mind.

Suddenly I had some help ignoring that sick feeling. The rumbling stopped and the white haze fell. Out the windows I could see the tops of trees, mountains, and valleys. The ship cruised along the top of a forest. The fighters blasted past our ship and turned away into the distance. Oddly our ship didn't shoot at them. In fact it seemed like we were in formation with them. One more thing to add to my ever-growing list of puzzles.

The ship brought itself to a hover and began to slowly land. Everyone was looking around, straining to see through the windows. Jais looked down at my hand and quickly pulled hers away like she hadn't realized what had happened. Her cheeks were flushed light red.

"Um… sorry, I uh…" She started to say sheepishly, I cut her off.

"don't worry about…"

THUD. The ship slammed hard onto the ground.

"son of a…!" Gron hollered.

"What did you do to yourself now?" Kren asked impatiently.

"Ah but mah tong"

"Ha! You always have to be chewing on something don't you?" Kren joked.

"Shuhup" I guessed that the cabin would have burst into laughter had we been back at the academy, but we had something else on our minds. Where were we? And why had we landed?

You could hear rust cracking as the ships doors opened. They creaked and squealed as they slowly parted and a ramp extended. We were in a forest.

As soon as the doors were open a blast of fresh air rushed into the cabin like a flood of water. The air carried the pungent odor of trees and plants. I could hardly believe that something could actually negate the overwhelming smell of the ship, much less overpower it. Outside I was met with a wall of green. I couldn't make out much of what I was seeing. I quickly unsnapped my harness and stepped out of the ship into the unknown.

Outside the smell was even stronger, completely washing away the ships stench. The area was dimly lit, slim rays of light pierced the dense foliage like laser beams.

"Kadrin? You still alive out there?" Gron asked from within the ship.

"Yes, I'm still alive." I answered, "It looks safe".

"Well 'looking safe' and 'being safe' are two different things." Shain slipped out of the ship. Her blonde hair was a mess from the ride and the landing. She was a tough girl, a tom boy some would say, but for being so rugged she fussed quite a bit about her hair. She would flip if she could see it right now. Sure enough, as soon as she got outside she began to run her fingers through it in an attempt to bring it into some semblance of order.

The grass felt good under my feet as I began to explore our landing zone. It felt good to walk, stretch my legs after the ride. There was a small stream in the corner of the clearing. The clear water looked cold and refreshing but I dared not drink it. Who knew what was in it, or if it was even water for that matter? The stream trickled through rocks and boulders and eventually disappeared into the trees.

The unnerving aspect of it all was how quiet it was. Aside from the ship, people, and stream not a sound could be heard, no birds, no wind, nothing. I was getting sick of this silence fast. The complete enclosure, thanks to the trees, didn't help either. It felt like we were locked in some kind of box. But at the same time it seemed so small and quiet; the force told me that this planet was teeming with life and energy. But it wasn't a pleasant energy, it was a dark, disturbing aura.

Slowly, the rest of the group began to file out of the ship. Each of them taking a long, deep breath of the fresh air, all looking around and reacting to the wall of green that met their eyes. Gron walked out last carefully looking all around before leaving the safety of the ship. Everyone began to disperse around the small clearing. Some peeking into the woods, others staring into the stream.

"Hey," one of the others asked. He was tall and thin, he had a datapad tucked into his pocket, and instant sign that this guy spent way too much time with his nose in a holobook. "Did anyone check on the pilot?"

"Dang, no" I started back over to the ship. It was odd that he was still in there. He could be trapped, or worse, dead. As I got close to the ship the engines suddenly sprang to life. The blast sent me flying through the air, smashing into Gron. The ship's doors closed as it lifted off into the sky. Everyone watched in confused horror as the ship blasted away.

For a guy who looked like he had eaten way to many muji cakes Gron had little padding and a lot of muscle. Now I'm not saying I'm a huge body builder, but I'm certainly not a lightweight, and my 170 pound self bounced off of him like a bouncy ball off of durasteel.

"What's going on? Where'd he go? What the…?" the question poured out of everyone. We were left standing in the middle of the clearing alone, lost, and bewildered. I got to my feet trying to shake off the impact. I felt really light headed. Jais came over to me we reached out with the force to steady me, the dizziness went away.

"Are you ok?" She asked with concern.

"Yeah I'm ok" I smiled at her, "thanks". I looked behind me Gron was still on the ground. I reached out my hand and helped him up. He looked ok, just a little hurt.

"OK, you know what, I am confused beyond all belief right now. If I don't get some answers somebody's going to get run through." Kren ranted frustrated.

"Yeah well who you going to beat? One of us?" one of the others asked pointedly.

"Keep talking Jad and it just might be you." The two glared at each other. Kren was short, maybe five foot eight but he was tough. I had dueled with him enough times in the ring to know that if anybody could take him they deserved to be a Jedi knight. The other one, Jad, was built almost exactly like him, short and muscular. The two began to move towards one another when Haron stepped in between them.

"Guys come on. Be smart about this. This is not what Jedi are supposed to be doing." Haron pleaded.

"Screw the Jedi" Jad spat the words out, "they ditched us, so we can ditch them, makes us even."

"Jad, come on man." The tall, nerdy one started.

"Shut up Denz or I'll…"

"So..."

I froze as a man's voice filled the clearing, "This is what I have to work with." Where was it coming from? It's like the voice just came out of nowhere. Everyone in the clearing froze, everyone scanning the trees trying to find the source of the mysterious voice. "I must say I'm not too impressed."

I searched the tree line frantically for any sight of whatever was talking. I reached out in the force, I found nothing. The trees, the stream, the other padawans but nothing else. There was no one else here.

"Where are you?" I yelled into the clearing.

"Can you not find me," the voice responded coolly, "try here". I spun around, the voice came from behind me. "Nope. Perhaps here" the voice suddenly jumped from behind me to the other side of the stream. I had seen people throw their voice before, but never like this.

"Show yourself you coward!" Kren demanded. The voice sighed.

"No, certainly not impressed" All of a sudden it was there. A whole new force signature, a whole new person suddenly appeared. I spun around as a man walked out from the trees. He was tall and built. About half of his dark hair had already turned grey, his short hair cut matched his short beard. He was wearing some kind of woven armor underneath some simple, black robes. The man strode into the clearing and stood in front of the group. "Well, let's start this off right," he said casually, "welcome to my home". he raised his arms to shoulder to height and turned back and forth as if displaying the forest around us. "Beautiful isn't it?"

"And your name is…?" Shain eyed him coldly. I glanced backwards out of the corner of my eye. Jais had slipped behind me, peeking out just a little past my shoulder. Kren had positioned himself on the man's flank for a better attack angle, that's what I guessed anyway. That or he just didn't want to stand still. Gron just stood there rubbing his stomach where I had hit him.

"Where are my manors?" the man said almost jokingly. "My name is Taryn. I'm the one in charge here…"

"And just where is here?" I asked.

"Well… 'here' is the fourth moon in the Gren system."

"There is no fourth moon in the Gren system." Jais said sheepishly. "It was destroyed…"

"In the Mandalorian wars. It was used to test experimental weapons." Taryn finished her sentence. "A nice cover isn't it? Massive war, experimental weapons, who would question it? No my dear girl there is still much life on this moon as you will soon find out. But to the rest of the galaxy we are all dead." He put too much emphasis on "dead" for my liking. Gron looked up suddenly.

"What do you mean we're dead?" You could see fear in his eyes.

"We're obviously not dead stupid, we're standing right here." Jad pointed out harshly.

"Well alive you may be here, but on paper, to the rest of the galaxy, you're all dead."

What? We all looked at him confused. What did he mean we were dead?

"A horrible tragedy, a Jedi convoy attacked by pirates, one ship completely obliterated in the fight. All onboard we're killed. Sad, sad thing." He made an obvious attempt at faking emotion.

"That white light," Denz was still putting his words together in his head, "that was a cloaking shield. They thought we blew up, but we were just covered."

"I see we have a bright one here. Some of the pirates even dumped some broken, charred pieces for your friends to mourn over. Quite an elaborate scheme don't you think?" Taryn smiled like he was proud of himself.

"So you kidnapped us." Shain started. She clenched her fists. Kren and Jad started to move towards him.

"On a foreign world I would choose my enemies wisely." Taryn warned them calmly.

"Well you aren't me old man." Jad ran at him. Suddenly Jad was flying through the air propelled by a massive force blast. He flipped and tumbled over our heads and landed hard in the stream.

Everyone's jaw dropped. What just happened? When I saw a Jedi I knew it. You could feel the force flowing from them, through them, not to mention the difference in dress, stance, and appearance. This guy looked nothing like a jedi and he gave off no ripples in the force. But just for that instant I felt a blast of power, I hadn't felt that much force since I saw Master Yoda in the duel ring. How could he give off no waves yet deliver such a blast?

"Ah," Taryn stared right at me. "I bet I know what you're asking yourself..." And suddenly there it was. The sick feeling, that hole in the force. There he stood, yet all I could feel was an absence where he should have been standing. The same exact feeling I had with those ships. This was not a regular man; this was someone, or something else. I took a step back, reaching a hand behind me to make sure Jais was still there. Everyone else backed up as well; they had picked it up as well. It was disturbing. "…but here is not the place to answer such questions. The sun is setting now, you'll need shelter. Follow the stream; it will lead you to my home."

Jad had managed to pull himself out of the stream and stood up.

"And why should we trust you?" he asked bitterly.

"Look around and listen. Do you hear it? No, you don't, it's quiet" then he added "at the moment. Most everything that lives here is nocturnal, and most everything would consider you a tasty snack. Let me put it this way: you can do what I say, or you'll last... eh" he shrugged his shoulders, "maybe a day or two." He smiled as he slipped back into the trees and disappeared.

"What the heck just happened?" one of the others asked.

"Man if I knew I wouldn't be standing here still." Replied Haron. Gron and Denz tried to brush off Jad but he pushed them away with hurt pride.

"Well guys." Jais had gathered herself, "he said follow the stream to shelter, I think we should listen."

"Listen to the guy who kidnapped us!?" Shain asked. "Can you give me any reason as to why that makes any sense?"

"When in Rome do as the Romans do." Denz quoted, holding his finger in the air like he was giving an important speech.

"Yeah well what the heck is that supposed to mean?" Jad asked bitterly as he wiped mud off his pants.

"It means when you're somewhere foreign the locals have a much better idea of what to do then you do." I explained.

"Yes but that doesn't mean you should trust every person that walks by." Haron said.

"No but he'll probably have food there and I'm starving." Gron said as he rubbed his stomach. I looked over at him impatiently,

"Gron, you're always hungry." Kren looked up at the tree tops.

"Guys I hate to break it to you but the sun is going down." He was right, light was fading fast. The rays of light were becoming fewer and more dim. The whole area was getting dark at an impressive pace.

"Ooh, darkness big deal." Shain said mockingly.

"Don't you remember?" asked Haron. "That guy said everything comes out at night."

"Yeah whose to say the guy who kidnapped us is telling the truth." Shain asked.

"Would you get over that already." I was getting tired of hearing this, "If he had wanted to hut us he would have done it already. That guy has to have something to do with the jedi, you all felt it."

"Doesn't mean he's not a Sith." Jad mumbled, as he rubbed his arm.

"Oh for heaven's sake there is no way this guy is a sith. We would have figured this one out by now." I challenged.

I had only ever encountered a Sith once. Years ago I went out to the Jedi space docks. I saw a sith being led into a ship by two Jedi. His hands were cuffed behind him and his face was marked by a saber burn. You could feel the dark energy radiate from him. I was young and his appearance frightened me. His face seemed to be twisted into a look of permanent anger.

The light was fading fast now. It was getting harder and harder to see. You could almost watch the change in lighting it was happening that fast.

Suddenly everyone stopped talking. This quiet forest was suddenly not so quiet. Animal noises began to drift in; the force told me that this planet was alive. Life energy sprang out from every corner, under every rock. The trees, the water, the ground all teemed with life.

We all looked at one another, we all knew what the other was thinking. Now we could put more stock in what Taryn had said. There were creatures out there, they were everywhere.

Then I felt it, something was coming, something bad.

"Guys…"

I couldn't even finish my sentence before a massive creature leaped from the bushes. The creature looked like a massive dog, with long grey fur and sharp white teeth. It happened too fast for anyone to respond. The creature clamped its jaws around one of the padawan's head and dragged him into the woods, his screaming muffled by the creature's mouth. I watched in horror as his flailing limbs disappeared into the bushes. I never even knew his name.

No one spoke, everyone stepped into a back-to-back circle scanning the trees. No one tried to go after him, it had happened so fast. We were in a foreign land, unarmed, who knew what else was in there it might be suicide to charge in. We stayed in the center of the clearing, the circle slowly turning. Everyone watching. Everyone braced.

"Guys" Jais' voice quivered as she spoke, "Let's just do what he said and get out of here." Slowly, one by one the group mumbled some sort of agreement. Each finding it hard to pull their eyes away the from woods.

You know this would be a lot easier if we could have at least kept out lightsabers, I thought to myself.

After we were kicked out of the temple we were forced to hand in the weapons we had trained with for years. I had no idea just how reassuring wielding one was until I had none. If the ship had at least stayed here we could have managed to find something for defense, right now we had nothing. Well, I take that back, we still had one advantage, we still had the force, the jedi couldn't take that from us.

We all gathered around the little stream, staring into the woods. The force told us the woods were alive and full of danger, and our ears agreed. Screams and animal cries filled the night. I could feel the hairs on the back of my neck standing on end.

The sun had finally set. We were enveloped in complete darkness as the whole group slipped slowly into the forest. The soft ground was moist under my feet. It squished and crunched as I followed the sound of the trickling stream. The air was moist and heavy breathing almost felt like drinking. We had to be in a low area, some place where runoff and rain water collected, if it rained here that was.

We walked deeper and deeper into the woods. It seemed to only get more dense. What had started as woods turned into a thick jungle. Then after a while it began to open back up. The tree canopy still covered the sky but inside it was much more open and clear.

For some reason though the whole area seemed to be lighted, dimly, but lighted. It was coming from some of the trees. I went over to one to investigate. The tree was covered with some strange vine. The bulbs glowed an eerie blue filling the whole area. It was faint, but it was light.

Kren gasped. He stopped dead in his tracks, the whole party stacking up behind him like derailed train cars.

"What the…" blurted out Jad. But he realized the source of the problem before he could even finish talking. The little stream flowed straight into a massive swamp. Our well defined trail had just blurred itself into a gigantic mass of water.

"This is lovely" Shain said sarcastically.

"Yeah no kidding" replied Kren, "so much for that trail"

"Well maybe the guy really was lying" Gron added

"I doubt it" I said, "Really what has he accomplished here? He got us lost in the woods, big deal, doesn't seem like a typical goal of kidnappers."

"Yeah well how would you know?" Jad questioned.

"He has a point, this doesn't make sense as a planned event, perhaps Taryn was just unaware of the water level, it may have rained, you never know." Man, Denz really was a nerd, this was going to be a trip.

"Wait, guys look." Jais wasn't quite as much of a nerd as Denz but she was intelligent, and she was observant, "There are ripples, that means it's still flowing." I looked down, sure enough the water in the swap was moving. In the dim light you may never have spotted it, but the force helped you see even when your eyes couldn't. The water was indeed moving. There still may be hope. If the water was moving it was probably moving towards another body of water, a lake, pond, river, or maybe, our little stream.

I began to speak when I felt something coming towards us. That sick sixth sense. It was behind me. Between me and whatever this thing was stood Jais.

Be it Jais or be it no one, I was not going to let another animal get the drop on us. I reached way down into myself, focused on what bit of force I could command. I leaped into the air and flipped over Jais. As I landed the creature lunged out from behind some bushes.

It wasn't the same creature, this one was scaly and lizard-like. Dark ripples emanated from it like a rising tide. Its eyes glowed in the force, I had never seen that happen before.

I gathered the force around me self and pushed my arms out on both sides me throwing Jais back and sending a force blast into the creature. The wave of energy collided with the creature in mid air like a cannonball sending it spiraling into a tree.

The thing was hideous, it had six legs and a long tail. Its long snout was lined with a row of short, sharp teeth. The green skin almost sparkled.

I hit it as hard as I could but that thing was not dead. The creature struggled to its feet and turned its hideous face towards me. I could almost see a thirst for revenge in its eyes. The creature flicked a long, snake-like tongue in and out of its mouth as it moved closer, one of its legs limping.

I started to back up. I wasn't totally sure what to do. I had never come across anything like this in training, and without a lightsaber? I looked around frantically, I needed something, anything, a rock, a stick, anything.

Suddenly two rocks whizzed past my head and slammed into the creature. One glanced off its shoulder rocking it backwards then the other one smashed right into its head with a sickening "thunk". A small stream of red dripped from above its eye as the creature's limp body slumped to the ground.

I stood there panting, my limbs shook. My heart was racing. It finally dawned on me what had happened. When you fight you really don't realize what's going on. It's all focus and reflex. Your mind is fixed totally on the fight. I had never done a move like that, and I had never killed anything. I hadn't killed this creature but this was close enough for me. I couldn't believe what had happened. But who on earth threw those rocks? I turned around, behind me stood the one last guy whose name I hadn't learned.

"You alright?" he asked.

"Yeah. Nice shot by the way."

"Yeah I really surprised myself there" Somehow his doubt of his own abilities and the remembrance that those rocks grazed right past my head didn't mix well. But the sound of Jais' voice pushed the thought out of mind.

"Um guys, a little help? The two of us turned around, there was Jais, tangled in a bush. At least I was guessing she was inside of it, of course all I could see of her was her leg. The two of us reached into the bush and pulled her out. She managed to get to her feet and started to brush herself off. Her hair was full of twigs and leaves. The rest of the group moved over to where we were, they must have jumped back when the thing jumped out, they all looked at her and chuckled. Jais just sighed. She looked over at me, still trying to get everything out of her hair,

"Thanks" she said.

"Well I started it, but this guy finished it, you can thank him too."

"Oh, uh thanks..."

"Vant" he introduced himself.

"Well nice to meet you Vant, I'm Jais." she reached out and shook his hand.

That settled that, now I knew everyone's name. We had me, Jais, Shain, Haron, Kren, Jad, Denz, Gron, and Vant.

The whole group began wading through the swamp, following the gentle current.

"This is seriously disgusting" Haron complained. Under our feet was about 4 inches of soft muck. I really didn't blame him, it really was disgusting.

"Oh quit whining" Shain said.

"You'd be whining plenty if any of this crap got in your hair." Gron said defending Haron. Shain glared at him. An evil smirk stretched across Kren's face,

"That sounds like it'd be pretty funny, hmmm..." he said as he looked over at her evilly.

"Don't you dare." Shain warned stepping away from him. I saw Haron move his hand just slightly, I felt a small pulse in the force. As Shain backed up she tripped suddenly and fell right into the murky water. She burst straight back up out of the muck in less then a second,

"WHO DID IT??" she was fuming. I tried hard to stop from laughing, Some sort of soggy plant was draped over her head covering most of her face. She wiped it off violently leaving brown streaks all over her face.

I couldn't take it any more, the sight of her standing there filthy and fuming was too much, I burst out laughing. The rest of the gang followed suite.

"Shut up!" she whined. She looked so pathetic standing there I couldn't stop laughing. Jais went to her and began helping clean her off.

"Come on guys," I managed to get out between laughs, "lets get going."

We walked all the way through the swamp until finally it formed back into the little stream. We followed the little stream for hours through the woods.

In training we had done some exercises like these, long difficult hikes through the woods. We would wear weighted suits and trudge for miles to build up our muscles and our endurance. Each hike was longer then the first. Every time we went I felt like I was not going to make it, after we had gone halfway I was ready to collapse, I pushed myself and pushed myself, and always fell at the end from exhaustion. I cant say this trip was harder, without the weighted pack everything felt a lot easier, but it was still long just as long.

Finally we made it into a clearing. It was smaller then the one we had landed in but it was still nice to be out of the woods. It wasn't pitch black anymore. Faint moonlight filled the clearing and reflected off of the water. In front of us stood a massive wall of stone.

We had been walking for hours. Morning had to be soon. Of course this wasn't home, who knew how long night lasted here, it could be months even. That though really bothered me, I wanted to get out of this darkness.

The little stream trickled down a huge cliff face forming a miniature waterfall. Standing in the edge of the clearing I could just barely make out the top of the cliff. The jagged rock looked like it would be relatively easy to climb, easy for ninety degree inclines that is. It looked like there would be enough hand and foot holds in the rough rock.

"Um do we have to go up there?" asked Haron staring up at the intimidating cliff face. Jad knelt down and scooped up some water in his hand.

"Looks like it if we're still following Mr. Mystery" he said before gulping down the water. Shain dunked her head into the water trying to clean herself off. She pulled her head up and flipped her hair into Jad's face, I chuckled. Jad muttered something as he dried his face on his sleeve.

"Sorry" she said sheepishly. Jad was more annoyed than angry, I tried not to laugh to hard.

"So the question remains," Denz started, "are we planning on climbing this precipice?" Kren leaned over to me,

"What's a precipice?" He asked quietly. I sighed.

"It's a cliff."

"Oh... I knew that"

"Taryn said follow the stream, the stream goes up, so we should go up." Jais stated.

"I think we've followed this stream far enough." said Jad as he sat down on a log.

"So do you have an alternative solution?" Denz asked.

"You are a nerd, a serious nerd." Kren said jokingly.

"No, I don't have an alternative solution. I'm just saying we've been walking for hours, through mud, muck, thorns, and man eating creatures. Could there seriously be some point to this?"

"Point or not we're alive, if he really wanted to kill us wouldn't he have done it by now?" I asked.

Nobody talked. Everyone just looked around, quietly pondering what to you. What other option did we have? Back into the forest? To what goal? So far the best chance we had was to follow what Taryn had said, as crazy as it sounded. "Look this cliff is higher than the trees," I started, "Let's just climb it. That way at least we'd be able to see everything."

"It has to be better then just sitting here." Jais said staring up the cliff.

"Ok guys I'll make you a deal: we'll climb and when we get to the top, if things haven't improved we'll go my way." Jad stood up, "What do you say?"

"Fine," Shain said reluctantly, "lets just go somewhere."

The whole group moved towards the cliff.

"Onward and upward" kren said boldly as he started up the cliff. Using the force he leaped from hold to hold. Haron and Jais were next up, right in front of me.

We had all done this in training. We all learned how to climb using the force, letting it pull you up instead of your arms and legs. Kren pulled ahead steadily as the rest of us tried to keep up. The climb was relatively easy. Hand holds and foot holds seemed well worn into the rock.

Behind me the sun was beginning to rise. A solid line formed between the light and the dark on the cliff face. Once I had passed through it I took a better look at the holds. They were worn in alright, very worn in. Most of them were smoothed from what had to be frequent climbs. We were not the first people to scale this wall.

I was getting a lot more questions then I was answers. At first it scared me but now it was just frustrating. All kinds of scenarios swirled through my mind, some good, some not so good. Also, who the heck was Taryn? Was he really a Sith? I thought I would have been able to at least figure that out, Sith sent out such huge ripples. Then again I had seen it myself, Taryn could hide his force signature, he could be nothing, he could be normal, or he could be that strange hole. Heck, for all I knew he could change his to be any one of us. The thought stayed in the back of my mind, maybe he was Sith. No he couldn't be it just didn't make sense, there had to be another explanation.

Hand hold after hand hold I scaled up the cliff, the force carried me up but I still had to work. My arms ached and my legs felt like the were going to fall off. I pressed on, the top was close. I only had to climb for about twenty more feet.

Kren reached the top, I saw him climb over.

"Well, what's up there?" Jad yelled up to him.

"Um..." came the response, "I don't really know. You guys have to see this."

"Great" I thought to myself, more mystery. What could be possibly be on top of this cliff?

Haron and Jais both scrambled over the top.

"What is that?" I heard Haron ask.

Finally I was close enough, I reached my hand up and wrapped my fingers over the edge. I got one last foothold and pushed/pulled myself over the edge.

Slowly I got to my feet. Haron, Jais, and Kren were just standing there staring. There in front of them stood a massive stone gate.

NEXT CHAPTER: 

"The City of the Dead"


	3. The City of the Dead

THE CITY OF THE DEAD

The light gray stone was very finely carved and with the wear on it, I would guess this gate was ancient. And there, in the center of the gate, was that symbol. That flame. It sent a chill down my whole spine. Kren stood, staring at the strange symbol.

"Do you guys...?"

"Yes" the rest of us replied before he could even finish. The four of us unable to tear our eyes away from the gate. Behind me I could hear Jad, Denz, and Shain grunt and groan as they scrambled over the edge.

"What in blue blazes is that?" Jad asked shocked.

"It appears to be some sort of ancient stone gate." Denz replied.

"We could figure out that much..." her eyes met the flame. "Do you guys...?"

"Yeah, we feel it".

"What is it?" Asked Kren. We all looked at Denz,

"I don't know everything guys." He shrugged his shoulders.

This was not just any gate, I could tell that much. That symbol though, what was it? What was it doing on this gate? It looked to have been carved the same time all of the other carvings were, but of course, what do I know about archeology?

It was the same symbol on the wings of those pirate ships. Or were they really pirates? Those ship were just too clean and and perfect to fit that. Something inside of me told me that those ships were not piloted by regular pirates. But what else made sense?

What was the connection? Why did those ships have this symbol? They brought us down here, this had to be their base. But, who were they, and if this is their base, why bring us here?

I finally managed to tear my eyes from the carving. I turned back around to the cliff, there was Vant struggling to pull Gron up and over the lip. I went over and grabbed Gron's other hand. Together Vant and I managed to get him up. He rolled over and laid on his back panting. Vant looked up at the ruins.

"Woah"

"Yeah, got any guess as to what it is?"

"Not a clue"

"Hey," Jad called to us, "I think I found the end of our little stream." Sure enough there on top of the cliff was a spring. The water trickled out of the ground and flowed down the cliff.

"I guess that means this is where we were supposed to go." Jais said staring into the spring.

"Looks like the only thing left to do is to see what's behind that gate." I said looking down the lengths of the wall the gate was in. The wall was decently high, it must have been thirty feet. It was all the same smooth grey stone.

"You want to go through that?! Are you serious?" Kren asked.

"Why not?" Haron asked.

"Who knows what's past that gate? It could be anything."

"What, more rocks?" Jad said sarcastically.

"This would have been the main gate into the city," Denz started, "Beyond this is probably some sort of courtyard, and then a city center of some kind, perhaps a temple."

"Great, but what kind of creatures have moved in? More of those crazy things?" Shain challenged.

"They're all nocturnal remember" Haron countered.

Denz moved closer to the Gate examining it.

"Look that symbol on the gate, that was on the wings of the pirate ships." I pointed out.

"That really makes me want to go in." Kren said sarcastically.

"Hey there's something written here." Denz said following carvings in the rock.

"Can you read it?" Jais asked.

"It looks really close to settian, just more basic, this might be what settian is based on."

"Well what does it say?" I asked.

"Um... let me see," He tried to pronounce the syllables, "eee... no, ell, da ... vohn. ell..da...vohn, eldevon."

"Eldevon?"Shain pondered.

"What's eldevon?" Kren asked.

"I have no idea what it means, I just figured out how to say it."

"I thought you could read it." Jad pointed out.

"I can read it, I just don't know what all the words mean."

"Eldevon" Vant said as he stared up at the gate, "must be the name of the place". Jais put her hand on the gate.

"Makes sense."

"So." I started, "I say we see what's in Eldevon."

"Haven't we gone over this already?" Haron asked. Jad turned back towards the gate.

"As strange as it sounds I guess I'm gonna have to agree with you, lets go."

"Alright, lets do it" I said. The nine of us lined up along the gate and started to push. The gate didn't budge. The gate had to weigh a few tons.

"OK, plan two." I stepped back. I focused the force around me and pushed hard against the door. The door creaked and rattled but still nothing.

"Good idea" Kren said as he back up. Kren and Jad stepped back, raised their arms, and fired hard into the door. It started to move, slowly. The doors slid back gradually. The rest of the group stepped back and joined us force-pushing the door. With the combined force it flew open. The stone doors slammed against their stops sending a cloud of dust into the air.

The nine stood staring into the cloud. I was not about to just charge in there, I waited for the dust to settle.

"Well forget you babies." Kren said as he marched forward, disappearing into the cloud. "Holy crap." I could hear the astonishment in his voice.

Finally the cloud settled. Behind the gate was a city, just as Denz had predicted. Low stone buildings surrounded a large central courtyard. Stepping in a realized that it was actually paved with stones. In the middle was a large fountain. It no longer ran and looked like it hadn't for years, perhaps thousands. Behind the low grey buildings stood a high stone structure. It was a stepped pyramid style.  I couldn't find a single building that was complete. Everyone one was partially destroyed, some completely leveled. The wear and tear from thousands of years did as much damage as bombs. I wondered what it had looked like when it was new.

I had seen pictures that looked this in some of the historical holobooks, but never had I stood in a place like this.

"Wow," Denz turned round and round trying to take in the whole site. "This is the central courtyard, there would have been a market, town meetings, festivals, all here." He continued blabbering on about the city but I tuned him out. Something didn't feel right.

"Kadrin." I spun around when I heard Jais' voice. "Kadrin, come look at this." I walked over to where she was standing. She was hunched over a crumbled wall.

"Look at this," she said pointing to a dark spot on the wall.

"What about it?"

"What does it look like to you?" I had to think for a minute.

"Looks like a scorch mark." I said looking over it.

"Exactly, the only thing that leaves this kind of scorch mark..."

"Is a blaster."

I grabbed Jais and rolled as a blaster round shattered the wall we had been looking at sending stone fragments flying. I had it again, that feeling that something was going to happen, and something did happen alright.

Laser bolts flew into the courtyard from all angles.

"What the...?" Jad said caught off guard. All of us were running now, dodging bolts as they smashed into walls and the stone pavement. Shrapnel flew everywhere as we ran for the gate.

"Who's shooting at us?" Kren yelled over the noise.

"How am I supposed to know," I yelled back, "Just keep running!" We were about to reach the gate. Suddenly it slammed shut as if it had been thrown by some massive hand, throwing more dust into the air. Blaster rounds slammed into the doors ahead of us taking out chunks of stone.

"Split up!" Shain yelled. We broke off running through the maze of small buildings. Sounds of blaster fire filled the air around us we zigged and zagged through the buildings.

I looked above me, a man, dressed completely in black jumped from roof top to roof top. He was carrying a blaster rifle. Who are they? I asked myself the obvious question. Of course right now it didn't matter, what mattered was surviving.

I went around one corner to find myself in an alley way, at the end was another man, he wore a mask on his face. In front of him was a tripod-mounted blaster cannon. I dove behind another building as the cannon fired, the bolt crashed into the wall behind me turning it into tiny chunks of stone. I was breathing hard, what was going on? Another round smashed into the wall above my head, I ducked as low to the ground as I could as pieces rained all over me.

I heard a crash and a grunt. I turned around, there was Kren on top of one the men. He had him on the ground and had the blaster in his hand.

"You're lucky I was here, he almost had you." He got up to run into the alley.

"You really don't..." Another round slammed into the ground a the base of the building. You could feel the force from the blast.

"You really don't want to go that way." I finished.

"I noticed" he said his eyes still wide.

"Lets go" I said as I got up, "we have to get around that guy." Kren and I ran around a few more buildings trying to get behind the man with the cannon. We made one more turn and found ourselves back in the courtyard. The men in black ringed the tops of the buildings. I could see Jais and Gron in one alley ducking behind a low wall. Denz and Haron were behind them. Shain pulled into another alley before diving away from blaster fire, she apparently was not expecting to end up back in the courtyard.

Suddenly Jad leaped up from behind one of the shooters on the left side of the courtyard. The two landed on the roof top, wrestling for the blaster.

"He's nuts! Does he want to get himself killed??" Kren gasped.

"We still have to help him, come on."

By now the other shooters had turned their attention to Jad, they moved closer waiting for a shot.

I ran out into the courtyard. I gathered the force around myself and sent a blast of force into two of the men. They flew backwards into the maze of houses.

Kren ran in behind me firing his blaster rifle. He sent a spray of rounds into the building tops sending chunks of stone everywhere. He did manage to hit one guy, a round smacked into his shoulder, he spun around and fell.

Now the attention turned back to us. Blaster bolts flew all around us. We ran for the closest cover we had, the fountain. The ground was exploding in front of us from blaster rounds.

In training we had learned how to dodge lasers, the force could tell us where they were about to hit, hopefully in time for us to twist away. I dipped and dodged as bolts passed all around me.

The fountain was getting closer. I stopped dead in my tracks as the fountain exploded into fragments. I turned to my left, there was the massive blast cannon. We were out in the open, in front of that thing.

Suddenly blaster bolts rained down on the man firing it knocking him to the ground. Jad had wrestled the rifle from the man and now was sending bolts towards all the others.

One of the men jumped towards Jad's roof, Shain sent a blast of force into him knocking him into the middle of the courtyard. He landed with a hard thud. Vant dove out from behind a building sending force blasts towards shooters. Gron, Jais, Haron, and Denz ran out launching the last two men with force blasts.

There wasn't anyone left. Smoke rose from blast craters. The fountain was completely demolished, and even more walls were destroy then before. Stones shards were scattered all over the floor. Smoke and the burnt smell of blaster fire filled the air around us.

My heart was racing. I had never been in a fight like that. My limbs shook. I tried to slow down my breathing but it was no use. I couldn't believe what had happened.

I hadn't had the time to think about it during the fight, but i had felt it. Those men, they had the same affect that the pirate ships did, the same affect Taryn had, that hole in the force, that emptiness. What was going on here? What were those people? How did they do that?

"The city of the Dead." Taryn's voice echoed through the courtyard. We turned around as Taryn jumped down from one of the rooftops. Jad and Kren raised their rifles at him.

"What are you talking about?" Kren Demanded.

"Eldevon." he said, "it means the city of the dead." He looked at the two aiming at him. "Feel tough now that you have weapons? I'd be careful if I were you."

When he said that the men who had been laying there stood up. The ones that had been blown backwards walked into the courtyard like nothing had happened. They walked forward and then just stood there in a rough line. Jad and Kren pointed their rifles frantically trying to figure out what to do.

"What do you think boys?" Taryn asked the men. One of them shrugged his shoulders.

'I'll think they have a shot." he said.

'I think I have a pretty good 'shot' if I'm holding YOUR rifle." Jad stabbed at him verbally while aiming at him.

"Want to try and take it from me when I'm not going easy on you?" he asked with a cocky tone.

"What's going on here?" Jais interrupted them.

Her face was covered in dirt. A few scratches ran down her cheek. It was hard to tell, but I knew Jais pretty well, she was holding back tears. Jais was scared.

I really didn't blame her I was scared too. This was insanity! Kicked out of our home, separated from our friends and teachers, shipped halfway across the galaxy, attacked by pirates, landed on a strange planet, witness someone get eaten, almost get eaten ourselves, walk all night through some crazy woods, then get shot at here. All the while plagued by unanswerable questions, mysterious characters, and enigmatic directions. I was ready to grab one of the rifles and put a laser bolt through Taryn's head, questions answered or not.

"Perhaps it is time you got some answers" Taryn pondered the thought. He motioned to the other men, I had finally managed to count them, there were ten, and they disappeared into the ruins. "Welcome to Eldevon" He made a sweeping hand gesture around the ruins, "The city of the dead."

"We know that already." Jad pointed out bluntly.

"Let me finish." He said holding up a finger at Jad, "This city was once the capitol, the seat of power over the entire moon. But as you can probably see, it has decayed over the years, and lost its original purpose. However it has gained a new purpose, Eldevon is the center for a school."

"A school?" Shain asked quizzically.

"Yes, my school."

"So... You decide you want to make a school, so you move into Eldevon, a dead city, on Gren 4, a dead moon, doesn't seem like you have a great base to draw students from." I pointed out.

"Actually, I named the place Eldevon, have no idea what it was called before that. Anyway, a 'dead' school doesn't make much sense does it? I need to draw students don't I? hmmm where could I get say... nine students from?"

"Woah buddy" Vant said as he backed away from him, "I don't feel like taking part in your little experiment."

"Wait a minute" Jais started, "All of this, everything that happened was set up wasn't it?"

"Ah yes," he started again in his odd manor of talking, "Wondering why you were," he looked over at me before finishing, "rejected weren't you?" He looked me right in the eyes when he said "rejected", that was disturbing. "I was the one that got you kicked out."

"You what?" Jad's eyes lit up with anger.

"Do I have to throw you again?" he asked Jad with an eyebrow raised.

Part of me said this guy was insane and wanted to run away from him. Another part tried to logically put this together, if he wanted to hurt us he would have already, he's obviously capable. The other part of me was just curios and wanted to hear this story. I think that was the side that was winning because I found myself glued where I was.

The scary thing was I still had no idea if Taryn was a Sith or not. He seemed way too calm to be a Sith, and he gave off no dark ripples. Granted he could off no force signature seemingly at will. I visually checked him over and over for any sign, no lightsaber, no tattoos, no insignias, no medallions, nothing.

"Long ago a team of jedi knights was sent out to destroy a sith temple." He continued, "Only one returned."

He jumped topics suddenly. "Medichloreans: the strange little organisms inside your body, these are created as connectors between your body and the force. As the force flows through you medichloreans develop allowing you to connect to it, to harness it's energy.

A research team of jedi discovered that anger, adrenaline, pride, have an affect. These and other strong, negative emotions mutate the medichloreans. Now instead of connecting you to the force they actually reach out for the force, a darker stream of the force. The dark side.

The mutated cells break down though and die due to the extra energy expenditure. These cells work harder and harder to draw the needed energy only to kill themselves further."

"Thats why the jedi warn us to stay calm and serene." Denz added.

"Exactly, Now why did only one jedi return? During the fight the jedi experienced these powerful emotions and their cells started to reach out for more energy. In a sith temple dark side energy was abundant and the cells mutated extremely quickly. Soon all but one Jedi had fallen to the dark side and the lone survivor had to destroy the rest of his team."

"How did that jedi resist? Why didn't his cells mutate?" Jais asked.

"That is the exact question the council asked. Another research team, these are two different teams by the way," he added, "took a closer look at his medichloreans. They were stronger, more resistant to mutation. This wasn't a developed trait either. His cells were naturally more resistant.

He quickly became the jedi's greatest warrior, he could go through the powerful emotions without any repercussions. He was sent all over the universe for the more dangerous missions. Missions normal Jedi were incapable of completing without starting to stumble towards the darkside themselves.

But, this information had to be kept secret, the sith must never find this out. If they could find a way to manipulate their own cells to be more resistant to mutation their cells could become longer lasting, Making the sith more powerful." He dropped his serious tone,

"And it would be a PR mess, 'jedi soldiers', that wouldn't go over so well."

"But this is still natural, they cant just change their own cells, they really couldn't do anything with that information." Denz asked.

"Well, we aren't about to run that risk. We don't want the sith to even start working on this" he said as an aside comment.

Things started to click in my mind. pieces of the puzzle began to fall into place. I thought I might have finally figured it out.

"Well what if we don't want..." Shain started,

"Why us?" I cut her off mid sentence. Taryn began to pace back and forth.

"For years I have watched students at the academy, looking for ones with talent, with brains, with strength, and with wisdom, also for ones with that special gift. I searched out students with the tougher medichloreans. When finally I had found enough potentials I arranged for your... 'covert delivery' here.

You all have a gift, an amazing gift. You have the ability to become more powerful then most jedi can dream of ever being. You can tap into both sides of the force and keep your balance. You are an unbelievably rare breed. Let me tell you, none of you can even imagine your own potential. Those people that attacked you, they are graduates of this school, if one of them wanted to they could have easily taken out all of you without even being seen."

Jad's eyes lit up, I guessed he liked the sound of that. Kren was paying a little more attention as well.

"How did you get into the temple?" Shain asked.

"Didn't anyone see you?" Gron added.

"How did I get in?... umm with the pass the council gave me, I walked through the main doors. And believe me, If I don't want to be seen, I wont be." He smirked when he said it.

"The council gave you a pass?" Haron asked surprised.

"The council authorized this whole place, well, I picked the planet. The school is moved every fifty or so years, make it a bit harder to find."

"So let me get this all straight," I tried to organize everything in my head, "We have some special kind of medichloreans in us, you have figured this out and brought us here, to your school."

Taryn looked as though he was pretending to ponder the thought, "Yup, that's about it, yeah."

"So what exactly does this school teach?" Jad asked.

"Saber dueling, stealth, spying, espionage, demolitions, dog fighting, assassination, military tactics in general, survival, navigation, stuff like that." He listed them off casually. Jad's eyes opened wide, a smile crossed his face. Jais backed up, her eyes opened too, but it wasn't joy.

"Jedi, don't do that kind of thing, Jedi aren't assassins, we aren't soldiers." Jais stammered as she backed up. Taryn suddenly took on a more serious tone, it was unusual compared to his oddly casual tone.

" In the temple you saw what happened on the surface, you saw nice and pleasant things, everything worked well, people were honest. Diplomacy worked. Well, I'm sorry little girl thats not how it works. In the real world" he put a lot of emphasis on real, "Diplomacy doesn't work unless somebody has a gun to their head.

On the surface two factions are talking nicely but thats half the story. Underneath, in the real world, covert agents hide deep behind enemy lines gathering information on the other faction, always preparing for war. Do you honestly think two systems have ever actually 'gotten along'?

Well that's where we come in, special Jedi that can harness the full power of the force and fight with the full power of a special ops. soldier. What better way to fight battles that don't exist then with soldiers that don't exist?"

"So you want to make Jedi spies out of us?" Haron asked, you could tell he liked the sound of that. Taryn smiled.

"Welcome to Eldevon."

NEXT CHAPTER: **Eldevon**


	4. Into the Heart of Eldevon

_**INTO THE HEART OF ELDEVON**_

We followed Taryn through the courtyard and towards the large pyramid. I began to realize just why the city was in ruins. Holes from blaster rounds were everywhere. You had to watch where you stepped, laser fire had upheaved the paving stones all over the courtyard. Stone fragments from buildings lay everywhere and smoke still rose from the destroyed fountain. They had done this before, this is what had ruined Eldevon. But, I had to hand it to him, the city of the dead really looked dead.

"Oh my gosh are you ok?" Jais gasped.

"Yeah why?" I asked. I followed her eyes down to my arm. Blood soaked my torn robes. "What the...?" I jerked my head back. Suddenly pain raced through my body, paralyzing my arm. Jais reached out and held my arm. Her force power started to soothe the pain.

I hadn't felt the hit or the pain during the fight. My mind was focused elsewhere and it just hadn't registered. Now that the fight was over it really started to hit me.

A gash ran almost the full length of my upper arm. The skin on either side was burned black. The slightest twitch of my arm sent pain through my whole body.

I sat down slowly, my head was starting to feel light. Jais continued to try and heal the wound. It was helping, not exceptionally quickly, but it was helping.

Vant was kneeling down next to me staring at the wound.

"Wait a minute" he said as he stared. He shot straight up, spun around, and stormed towards Taryn. "What in heaven's name were your guys doing shooting at us with live rounds??" He yelled into Taryn's face as he clutched the collar of his robes.

Taryn stared down at the hand annoyed. Vant cringed and released his hand quickly as if he had grabbed a hot handle. Taryn smiled cooly,

"Thank you. Now, there's a policy here at Eldevon, I guess you could call it a "pass or fail" system."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Jad demanded.

"It means you succeed or you flop, you make it or you don't, you fly or you crash. Toy guns and fake rounds aren't the same as real ones, they don't sound the same, act he same, or feel the same. So at this school we don't use them."

"You mean we can really get killed?" Haron gulped. Taryn smiled evilly.

"What did you think pass or fail meant?"

"You mean pass or die." Shain shot at him.

"If the real world isn't going to be forgiving then neither will I."

"You're a psychopath!" Shain yelled as she backed away from him.

"What Shain, you scared?" Jad asked.

"Of course she's scared. Why shouldn't she be?" Jais glared at Jad.

"Survival of the fittest, the weak don't make it." Jad said with his cocky tone.

"Neither do the stupid." Jais snapped at him.

"Psychopath is such a harsh term." Taryn started in his unemotional tone, but suddenly dropped it and picked up a very serious one. "Allow me to share with you what the jedi masters call a 'harsh reality': in war, people are going to die. It is not a probably, it is not a maybe, its not a statistic, people will die. Now allow me to pose a question to you: which is more insane, to risk the lives of a few in training, or to risk the lives of thousands in a real battle? which is more cruel, to teach you how to deal with war, or to throw you into it and say 'good luck'?"

"Well what if we don't want to be part of your... 'training program'?" I asked. Taryn took a more cold and evil tone.

"The rest of the galaxy thinks you are already dead, why not just end the confusion?"

"What do you mean?" Haron asked eyes wide.

"How can I let you simply walk out of here? You have seen quite possibly the galaxies biggest secret that would be quite a liability for me."

"So you would kill us?" Vant challenged.

"Allow me to say that going through training with only a risk of death is a far better alternative then refusing." He spoke with his back turned as he continued walking towards the pyramid.

"You've lost your mind." Denz appeared as if he was trying to study the man, read his mind or something. Taryn stopped, dropped his head back, and rubbed his temples as if we were the cause of some headache.

"Yes, we've been over this already. Now are you coming or not?"

"So we're prisoners here aren't we." Jais asked. It wasn't really a question, if everything he said was true then we could all put the pieces together, we were prisoners here. We were about to take part in his twisted program wether we wanted to or not.

The thought of escape was certainly running through my mind, but the jedi had trained me better then that, I wasn't stupid. Even if I did manage to escape the city walls and the squad of whatever those men were I'd still have to slip past a man I can't sense and who can throw me around like a toy. Not to mention I had no idea what possible way there was to get off the planet. Escape was not possible right now. I was trapped here, and until I could find a way off planet I was going to have to survive Taryn and his life or death program.

We followed Taryn through the maze of buildings and roads, my injured left arm cradled in my good one. The rest of the city was as trashed as the section we had seen, destroyed buildings, rubble, and all over the walls were blaster burns. There were other burn marks too, longer ones, they almost looked like lightsaber burns.

When we finally emerged from the labyrinth we found ourselves staring up at the pyramid, we had walked around the back side of it. The structure was comprised of massive stone blocks stacked one on another. Taryn waved his hand and one of the stones slid backwards into the pyramid.

He motioned to us to follow as he disappeared into the black. We all stood there, hesitant to follow. He was willing to kill us, he had admitted it right in front of us! Moments before his henchmen had even tried it! Yet here we are expected to follow him into some dark dungeon. It was insane. What was more insane was that despite my confusion, anger, and fear I found myself following this madman down into this dungeon. I could sense the same emotions, the same confusion in the rest of the group as we slowly made our way into the abyss. Inside was a staircase and we cautiously preceded down it. The whole group was speechless.

"You'll have to forgive me for the darkness," Taryn apologized, "One of our training exercises ended up in the stairwell. Come to find out light fixtures down hold up to lightsabers very well. Give me a second and I can get some light here." I could hear him fumbling with something metallic. "Stupid thing never works" he muttered to himself. Judging by the sound Taryn must have smashed whatever he was playing with against the stone. Suddenly the stairwell was full of light, Taryn's glowrod illuminated the area. "Ah... much better."

"Does it seem odd to anyone else that we walked into a pyramid and we're going down?" Kren asked.

"Pyramids rarely contained anything in their upper structures, everything was built below it." Denz answered him.

"Well we use quite a bit of this pyramid but you have to go to the bottom first, its kinda like the literal incarnation of working your way up from the bottom... it's a little joke of ours."

"Speaking of that who is this 'us' that you keep referring to? Are there more people here?"

"Nope, just me and my students, we keep it fairly simple. Besides, more people just add security risks. A school like this can't remain invisible if it grows too large. Of course, it would be just the ten of us, the graduates you met earlier will remain here for a little while longer, until they are needed for a mission of their own."

We continued the walk in silence, down and down, deeper into the pyramid, then finally we found the bottom, and a door. A massive, durasteel door. It must have weighed tons. Taryn punched a code into the number pad on the door and it slowly swung open, my jaw dropped. Inside looked like a republic military base. The room must have been the size of a warehouse. Computers and screens lined the walls. Starships floated in repair bays. Weapon racks were all over. The whole room bustled with droids. They scurried about repairing ships, moving supplies, and doing a host of other tasks. One of Taryn's 'graduates' sat in front of a massive computer system doing something, I couldn't tell from the distance. Taryn didn't stop to look around.

"If Eldevon was a body then this would be its brain and its arm." Taryn said as he took us through the room. For its brain we have the control and resource center, the CRC as we call it, direct link to the jedi archives, plus some information the archives don't have, and a connection to any republic database and computer in the galaxy. And for Eldevon's arm we have at least one of every known weapon in the galaxy, a full wing of starfighters, one cruiser, and a few transport ships."

"How, and where did you get all of this?" Haron asked.

"Where? From all over. How? Well, not all of it was legally acquired, but the previous owners aren't really in a position to do anything about it."

"What do you mean?" Shain asked.

"There isn't much you can do when there's six feet of dirt on top of you. And if you'll step into the elevators" he changed the subject, "I'll show you where you are staying.

The elevator ride seemed to take us further up than the stairs had taken us down, only much faster. Finally at floor twelve the doors hissed open. Before us was a large room furnished with tables, chairs, and couches, from my guess: it was a massive lounge. Straight ahead of us was a huge window overlooking the city and the jungle beyond it.

"Where are we?" Haron asked staring around the room with wide eyes.

"We are about one a hundred feet up inside the pyramid." Taryn answered as if he was a tour guide.

"I didn't see any windows when I looked at it." Denz looked the window up and down to see if it was real.

"No you didn't, or at least you didn't think so. These are one-way windows perfectly camouflaged to match the outside. I thought they were pretty nifty." Taryn smiled. "Now," He waved his arm around the room pointing out the numerous doors that surrounded the it, "These are your individual rooms. That's right you each get your own room, I'm cheap but not that cheap. Each one has a name tag on it, if your name is spelled wrong blame Jessen, he wrote them all. Breakfast is at four hundred hours, your droids will show you how to get there, goodnight." With that he spun around walked back into the elevator, and before any of us could get a word in, he was gone.

"Well goodnight guys," Kren yawned, "see you in the morning".

"Wait just a minute" Shain stopped him, "You can't tell me your trusting this guy."

"Maybe I am, maybe I'm not, either way I'm tired."

"Shain you've been like this since we met the guy. He has had numerous occasions to kill, harm, or do whatever the heck else we wanted to, but yet he hasn't done anything." Vant tried to reason with her.

"You mean to tell me that we get kicked out of the academy, attacked by pirates, shot down, dragged through a jungle, shot at, and then this guy shows up, says everything was his doing, and that he had good intentions, and you want to believe him." The group was silent.

A jedi can sense fear in a person, but I didn't need the force to look into her eyes and see her fear. She wasn't the only one. We had all gone over this over and over, and I had the feeling we were going to keep going over it until it tore us apart from the inside out. It had to end.

"Hey," I spoke gently, It's been more then two days since we had a good nights sleep, we need some rest. Lets just all sleep here in the lobby, it'll be safer that way."

"Sounds good to me. Goodnight." Kren crashed on one of the couches. Everyone else agreed. Shain quietly laid down on another couch and closed her eyes. I sat down in one of the chairs, I didn't even need to lay down, once the fatigue hit me I fell right asleep.

"Thud" I jerked my head as something slammed into it. It took me a few seconds to fully regain consciousness. I caught movement out of my peripheral vision and ducked as Gron's foot sailed past. He was laying down on the couch next to my chair and must have kicked me in his sleep. I rubbed my head and looked at my chrono. One. "Gron you big idiot" I whispered so he wouldn't hear. I looked around, it looked like aftermath of a battle with bodies laid out all over. I soon realized I wasn't the only one awake. Jais was sitting on the window bench looking out at the sky. Her hair was down instead of in its usual pony tail but she was still running a bit of it through her fingers. I got up and walked over towards her. After stepping over Vant and Haron I sat down beside her.

"I can't sleep." She answered my question before the words came out my mouth.

"Why not?" I already knew the answer. She didn't take her eyes off the sky,

"Do you remember anything about your home?" She ignored the question. "Not Coruscant, I mean before the jedi took you." I had to think about it for a moment.

"No, not really I guess, I was taken when I was really young."

"Trishney, was my home. It's a backwater planet, no speeders, no droids, no space travel. I remember one thing: my father was holding me, he already knew the jedi were on their way, he said 'look at the stars, someday you'll be up there with them.' I always feel like when I look out there it's like somehow I'm looking back at him, and he's looking at me." The two of us sat there in silence. she turned her head suddenly away from the sky, "I'm sorry, I don't even know why I'm telling you all of this."

"It's alright," I reassured her, "I don't mind"

"Can you not sleep either?" she asked now looking at me.

"Not with Gron kicking me in the face I can't." I tried to smile.

"I'm sorry." she looked sympathetic, "I can't stop thinking about all of this, I feel so..."

"Scared?" I finished her sentence for her. She nodded slowly and wrapped her arms around herself like she was cold. A tear ran slowly down her cheek. I put my arm around her trying to be chivalrous and comforting. Jais just leaned against me. I tried to think of something to say, some way to tell her not to be afraid but I couldn't think of anything. I remembered something master Yoda had told me: "When unsure you are of what to say, better it is not to say anything. So we sat there and looked at the stars in silence. After almost an hour jais fell asleep. I gently laid her down on the bench and went back to my chair. This time the butterflies in my stomach weren't from fear.

---{}---

A loud thud woke me up. This time it wasn't a foot slamming into my nose. I opened my eyes to see Gron rolling on the floor.

"Who tied my feet together?" he groaned. I just smiled to myself.

Everyone was awake now. Haron was still rubbing his eyes,

"What time is it?" he asked.

"Three" a few people answered in a discordant unison. Haron groaned and laid back down smothering his head in pillows. It was still dark outside.

"Taryn said breakfast was at four hundred hours and I don't know about you guys but I feel like eating." Kren said. Gron rubbed his stomach. I could hear it rumbling.

"Food sounds really good right now."

"I think out of all of us you could go the longest without food" Jad poked his stomach. Kren dropped down to the floor and started doing pushups.

"What are you doing?" Shain asked him.

"Pushups. Not too many, maybe fifty."

"Why?"

"Gotta stay in shape, gotta look good for the ladies." He gave her a cocky smile. Shain rolled her eyes.

"Like you have any hope." She muttered.

Denz had found a holobook somewhere and had had plopped down in a corner of the room to read it. Jais still sat on the window bench. Shain looked over at the window and saw her reflection.

"Oh my gosh!" She reached up to feel her hair. Now I don't know much about hair styles but that still looked pretty bad.

Jad laughed, "Looks like something made a nest in there."

"Shut up." she scolded him without taking her eyes of the window, "I bet there are refreshers in our rooms." She scanned down the doors until she found one with her name on it and disappeared inside. The refresher sounded like a good idea, I went down the row of doors: Kren, Gron, Jayden.... who was Jayden? Then I remembered. Now I knew his name. I put my hand on the door for a moment, it seemed like the only reverent thing to do right then. I went to the next door, it was mine. I opened the door and walked inside.

"Greetings master Tryon." I spun around, a small droid floated in the air above a low table. "Is there anything I can assist you with?"

"Um.... I was just looking for a refresher..."

"Behind this door," the droid floated over to a door and hovered in front of it. "Is there anything else I can assist you with master Tryon?"

"No, I think that will be all.... um, what's your name?"

"I am T-3179 a personal assistance droid. I have been assigned to you master Tryon."

"Well, good to meet you. Do you know where we're supposed to meet Taryn?"

"Master Taryn has instructed me to direct you to room five on floor eleven."

"Ok, thanks."

The nine of us piled into the elevator and rode down to floor eleven. We all looked clean and rested now, not like we had just crashed in the jungle. The dirt and grime that covered us was gone. T-3 had even showed me a fresh set of clothes on my bed and by the looks of things everyone else had a similar experience. These weren't the robes and tunics of the temple, these were tougher cloths all drab colors.

The doors hissed open. There stood one of the "graduates" as Taryn called them. He was dressed similarly to us, the simple, rugged clothes. He stood about six feet tall and had short blonde hair. immediately I could feel waves of energy radiating from him. I had only felt energy like that come from the jedi masters at the academy. How could such a young man, who had only just graduated, possibly be so powerful? My eyes perceived him as a poor civilian, through the force, he glowed brilliantly.

Then suddenly there it was. That hole, that sick sense that there was a vacancy in that spot. The man hadn't flinched, hadn't waved his hand or any shown any tricks but somehow it changed. Then as quickly as it changed, it changed back. He gave us a cocky smile.

"Just showing off. Allow me to introduce myself," he started, "I'm Jessen. I'm one of your mentors."

"Mentors?"

"Myself and a few other graduates are going to stick around for a while and help Taryn train you bunch. Anyway I'm supposed to show you where to get to breakfast. Follow me"

"What is that?" I asked him as we walked.

"What breakfast? It's the first meal of..."

"No, that trick with your force signature."

"Oh, negative. That is something you will learn how to do here. Going negative is basically disconnecting yourself from the force."

"I thought that was impossible" Jais looked confused.

"Not impossible, just difficult; and you can only survive without it for so long."

"But why do it?"

Jessen stopped walking. His smiled suddenly disappeared. "There are things out in this world that are dangerous. Worse then the are things that are deadly. But there are others, others that are more frightening then you can imagine. The force connects all things to one another, that means they can reach you. Sometimes going negative is the only way to save your life. You will learn when you are ready."

He hit a switch on the wall and a door slid open. There was a large room, almost like the lounge in what we had started calling our dorm except it had a large table in the center. The table was incredibly well made, intricate designs and carvings adorned the table. The dark wood was polished so well I could almost see my reflection in it. It felt smooth as I ran my fingers over it.

"Wow," Vant said running his hand over the table, "This is hand carved. Who made this?"

"Bored student." Taryn answered him as he walked out of another room. "He's on mission now. Anyway R-14 has worked very hard to make a fine meal for you all.

A humanoid droid waddled in. An apron hung from it's neck, "Galaxie's Best Cook".

"Good morning students." it said in a cheery, robotic voice, "breakfast is served."

Laid out across the table was more food then I had seen in a long time. Some of it I recognized from the temple, but I had no idea what most of it was. Not knowing what any of it was didn't stop any of us from devouring it. I stuffed myself until i couldn't eat anymore. I hadn't realized how hungry I was until I saw the feast laid out before me.

---{}---

I leaned back in my chair, I hadn't eaten since Coruscant. The food felt so good in my stomach. Kren was laying on the ground moaning.

"I think I ate too much." he groaned.

"You ate the entire tray of that green stuff, I didn't even know what it was." Shain said.

"I don't know either, but it was good." he said as he rolled over.

"That was gnock, a Trandoshan delicacy," R-14 answered us as it strode around retrieving our used plates. "And you consumed at least 12 portions."

"What's in that stuff?" Kren asked.

"Gizka intestines." The droid answered cheerfully and waddled off. Kren suddenly looked a bit pale.

Gron was the the only one still eating. He had a biscuit in one hand and a spoon full of something in the other.

"Are you guys done?" he asked with his mouth full.

"Yes" The rest of us answered in unison. Taryn stood up.

"Well now that you're all fat and happy lets get rolling."

"But..." Gron started to protest.

"Oh come on." I grabbed him and pulled him away from the table. We followed Taryn into the elevator and down a few floors. "Do you all want to hear a story?" Taryn asked as we rode the elevator down, "Once upon a time there was a bunch of padawans, padawans just like you. These padawans had to learn that their eyes were not the only thing that they could use to see." The elevator stopped and the doors opened, but nothing was in front of us, just black.

"Good luck." Taryn said, he force-pushed us out of the elevator and into the black.

I hit the ground hard. I could tell from the feel of it that it was a dusty concrete. I got to my feet and brushed myself off. I couldn't see anything. I held my hand in front of my face, I couldn't see it.

Master Windu had told us something in the academy. "Your eyes will fail you, but the force will not." I closed my eyes and let an image appear in front of me. I could see emptiness. Around me I saw the glowing blobs that represented the other padawans, but around us, only emptiness.

"Where are we?" Haron voice echoed.

"My guess is a large, empty room of some kind." Denz's voice answered back.

"Well that was helpful." Shain said sarcastically.

"Why are we in here?" Jais asked.

"Who knows, I told you there was something up with that guy." Shain answered her. I started to explore, walking was difficult with no real sight. The only thing that seemed to occupy the room were rows of massive pillars. As far as the force would let me see I could find nothing, just a huge, empty room.

Then something started to appear, a force signature. It was far away but it was getting closer. It was a droid. I jerked to the side, it wasn't a thought, it was a reaction. I felt the heat of a laser bolt as it passed by my face. The force gave the jedi incredible reaction time. However, you didn't need the force to see the laser bolts, the bright streaks of red light shone in the darkness.

"Scatter!" Kren yelled into the darkness. I broke into a run, I got behind the pillars and ran along them towards the droids flank. Blaster bolts went everywhere, some smashed into the pillars, some zipped through grazing past me. Finally I was next to the droid, I focused on the image in my mind and force pushed it into the next row of pillars. The droid stuttered but started to get back up, I grabbed it with the force and slammed it hard into one of the pillars. Sparks flew everywhere.

"Nice job!" Gron voice called from another pillar.

"Don't start partying yet, look!" Jad's voice brought me back from my shock. There were more signatures, more droids. There were a lot more signature, tens, hundreds. They were all around us, everywhere, circling, closing in.

The group of us backed up until we all stood back to back.

"What do we do now?" Haron's voice quivered.

"I don't know." Shain sounded just as scared as I felt. Thoughts raced through my mind, what to do? How do we get away from this many droids? Then I had an idea. I remembered a tactic taught in the academy: when the enemy is stronger, use their power against them.

"Guys, listen to me, on the count of three, everyone run in a different direction."

"What?!?" Jad asked.

"We might be able to catch them in the crossfire, just trust me."

"That might actually work, basic droids don't have fast enough motion trackers. If we move fast enough they could miss us, they might even shoot each other! " Denz agreed with me."

"Alright, 1...2...3...GO!" We broke into a run straight at the advancing droids, all of us in different directions. I Jumped and used the force to propel me over the first few lines. I hit the ground and rolled as blaster bolts flew through the empty space where my head had been. I grabbed one of the droids with the force and threw it into another group before jumping again. Lasers and sparks flew everywhere. I could see flashes of light where the other padawans were. With all the light from the lasers the room was almost bright enough to see in. I backed up and hit another body, I turned, I could barely make out Vant's face in the flashes of light. We caught each other's eyes and immediately rolled away as lasers streaked around us.

We didn't need to speak to each other, we could communicate through the force. Not words, not sounds in your head, but you knew what the other wanted to convey to you. We both picked up droids and threw them at each other with the force, the droids collided in the air sending stray laser bolts and sparks everywhere.

The plan was working. The remains of destroyed droids laid everywhere. The lasers came in thinner waves now, and there were fewer force signatures. Droids were falling left and right. They couldn't hit us, we moved too fast for them to track. Their bolts sailed past us and crashed into other droids. After more running and rolling the lasers stopped. I scanned through the room, nothing was left. I walked back towards the group. I could see Jad's signature, I could see the stream of energy connecting him to a droid's image. That stream represented a connection in the force, he was holding the droid. He swung it into a pillar then released it. The droid smashed into pieces, the explosion threw one last flash of light into the room before it returned to the blackness.

I could barely breath. In the darkness all you could hear was the gentle panting and the crackling of broken droids. Small sparks flickered throughout the room.

Suddenly a flood of light rushed in from one spot behind us. I shielded my eyes until they could adjust. a blurry figure strode from the square of light. The sound of slow clapping echoed through the room.

"Good, good, good. I am very impressed." It was Taryn.

"What the kind of insanity was that?" Jad yelled at him.

"That was an omnidirectional assault of a numerically superior force. Or in the more common military slang: guys came from everywhere!" he answered smiling. "And I must say you handled it brilliantly."

"I know what it was you psycho, now why the frick would you do that do us?"

"Consider it test number one... actually, number two, no, wait..." he counted on his fingers, "maybe it's like test 6 or something, I don't really keep count, anyway that performance was exactly what I wanted."

"Those were real lasers you sicko!" Shain yelled at him.

"I warned you already didn't I? I don't joke around here, this is real. Now," He changed subjects abruptly, "come with me. You might find this of interest." He turned and strode back to the elevator.

I had met this man countable hours ago and already he had endangered my life more then anything or anyone else had ever. Yet somehow I was starting to trust him. I don't know, maybe trust wasn't the best word, but I could find no deception in him. Everything he had said was either completely logical or proven. He hadn't killed us; sure he had risked our lives, but we handled everything he threw at us with relative ease. The only way it made sense was if he wasn't trying to kill us. If that was the case, then why drag us all the way out here? His was the only story that made sense. He must be telling the honest truth! There was no other way to explain it, Taryn was here by the council's order and we were here by his.

I followed him towards the door.

"Kadrin, what are you doing?" Kren asked in disbelief.

"I'm following him."

"You're crazy!"

"I'm not crazy..." This was not the place to get into a long discussion, "Look, would you rather stay here?"

"As a matter of fact..."

"Come on kren." vant grabbed his arm and pulled him towards the door. Soon the rest of the group followed. The door turned out to be the elevator and we headed down even more floors until the elevator stopped again. This time It was just a simple room with one large window making up an entire wall. The window wasn't looking out to the outside, it was looking down into a large room. Crates, boxes, and water drums were stacked randomly throughout the room. Two men stood on either end of the room. I recognized them, they were two of the graduates. Taryn leaned on a railing in front of the window and stared down into the ring.

"The one on the left is Kal and the one on the right is Ferrian." He looked up at us, "Those two came here in a group just like yours almost ten years ago. They went through everything you have, are, and are yet to go through. You were not my first group and neither are they. All of you had told me the same things, 'you're insane' is the most common one. Now here they stand after completing all of their trials."

I stared down into the ring at the two men, they just stood there watching each other. Through my eyes the two men were just standing there, through the force I could see their force signature, but their image was surrounded by a blue, pulsating glow.

A tone sounded. Beams of light appeared in front of each of the men, they were lightsabers. Kal had a blue blade and Ferrian had a green, rare double bladed lightsaber. The men stood and starred at one another. The gentle glows each erupted into a blue blaze, it looked like the two men were engulfed in flames. Then suddenly both broke into a run straight at each other. Ferrian jumped into the air, he sailed further then I had ever seen. Kal pushed his arm out towards him. A massive wave of energy flew from his hand, Ferrian somehow did a barrel roll in the air and dodged the mass of blue. He returned a wave of his own just as large as Kal's. Kal put up his hand in front of him, the blue energy broke and rolled around him smashing into the crates behind him. The durasteel crates crumpled and flew. Kal sprinted at Ferrian and they both became entangled in a blur of green and blue as sabers swung and crashed against each other.

I couldn't focus on anything but the duel in front of me. I knew my mouth was wide open as I starred in disbelief at the display before me. I had never seen a fight like this in the academy, I had never seen that much power. Not in one quick blast, that was impossible.

The two continued the fight. Ferrian used the force to pick up two massive piles of crates and launch them one by one at Kal. Kal broke into a run, boxes crashed behind him as he raced in an arc around Ferrian. He jumped into the air and launched a massive wave down onto Ferrian's head. Ferrian curled his arms into his chest and curled his whole body. The blue flames seemed to retract into him as the blast crashed into him. The flames returned and he stood up to see Kal's lightsaber flying through the air straight at him. I had never seen a jedi throw a lightsaber before. Ferrian somehow grabbed the handle and threw it right back at Kal. It sailed past him and embedded itself in the wall. Kal flipped backwards as Ferrian charged. Kal sent a smaller wave into Ferrian knocking him back. Ferrian pulled out a blaster while he flipped through the air and fired several rounds at Kal. He pulled his saber out of the wall just in time to spin and begin deflecting rounds. The two of them jumped into the air at each other and the blur of light began again. It was too fast for me to follow. Then it ended abruptly. The two managed to instantaneously stop. Ferrian had his saber poised to strike but Kal held his lightsaber against his neck. They both deactivated their blades and shook hands. The blue flames retreated back into the gentle glow. They walked off together laughing.

I couldn't move. I had never seen something like, it was so fast, so powerful. One time I had seen two jedi knights return from a mission. They were some of the best, in fact the council was considering to promote them to masters. I watched the two spar with my class. I had been amazed then as I was now, but they were not anything like these two men. I looked down into the ring. Ferrian's blast had crumpled reinforced durasteel crates like they were paper.

The rest of the group wore the same expressions. Their jaws were dropped and their eyes were wide, none of us could believe it.

"The risks here are great, but the rewards are even greater." Taryn turned from the window to look at us, "If you all want to serve the republic, if you all want to combat the sith, if you all want to become one with the force, then this is the place to learn. I have seen all I needed to see, you are ready to handle the trails ahead of you. Tonight will be your official initiation into Eldevon. I'll call you when it's time to leave. Until then," He gave us a cocky smile, "settle in." He motioned to the elevator. We filed in and rode back up to our dorm. Finally the silence broke.

"That was amazing!" Haron exclaimed. "I want to be able to do that."

"Have you ever seen anything like that?" Vant asked

"Never," denz shook his head, "that was unbelievable."

The elevator doors opened and we filed out into the lobby.

"I'm going to sit in my room and think." I said as I walked to my door. I stepped inside.

"Greetings master Tryon, is there anything I can assist you with?" T-3 floated in the air in front of me.

"You don't have to use my last name you know."

"What would you prefer I refer to you as master Tryon?"

"Just me call me Kadrin."

"Very well master Kadrin." The droid beeped like it changed a setting.

"No, just Kadrin, not master."

"Very well master Kadrin."

"No, not master just Kadrin, not master Kadrin, just Kadrin."

"Very well master Kadrin." The droid repeated. I sighed and walked over to the dresser. I started to open drawers. Clothes, all the drab colored, heavy duty clothes I was wearing now.

"Not a whole lot of variety" I thought to myself. I opened another drawer, there was an equipment belt. I checked the pockets: water purifier, survival rations, vibroblade, microcable, waterproof lighter, and a few empty pockets. I returned the belt to its drawer a second before someone knocked on my door. "T-3, let them in."

"Yes master Kadrin." I started to speak, but decided to just let it go. Jais stood in my doorway. "Oh, hi," I tripped over my own tongue, "You can come in if you really want to."

"Ok, I just..." she spoke sheepishly. " I just wanted to say thank you."

"For what"

"For last night, I don't know what was wrong with me..."

"It's alright." I tried to reassure her.

"No, its not. I should be stronger, I shouldn't be breaking down over any little thing."

"Little thing? I wouldn't call this a little thing. I don't remember being more confused or scared in my life."

"You're scared too?" She asked almost in disbelief. I sat down on my bed.

"Yes."

"I'm sorry." She rubbed my arm, I winced. She jerked her hand back. "Oh your arm. I forgot, I'm sorry."

"No, no I'm fine, I think I just got smacked there." Jais sat down next to me.

"Hold still" she started to roll my sleeve up. I jerked my arm from the pain and grit my teeth.

"I said hold still." She scolded me. The force could heal wounds, any jedi could use it to treat injuries, I could heal my own but It took concentration and focus. Jais seemed to be able to do it much easier then any of us. I could feel energy coursing through my arm, it was a tingling sensation I never liked to repeat but it was better then the pain of a bruise on top of a laser burn. I could almost see my skin reverting to normal colors and stitching itself back together. Jais held my arm for almost half an hour before stopping. It looked and felt a lot better then it did.

"Thank you." I said flexing my arm back and forth, "I guess I owe you."

"It's ok," she said as she smiled, "I like doing it." then she changed subjects, "What do you think Taryn meant?"

"About our 'initiation' you mean?" She nodded, "Who can tell with that guy? One minutes he's feeding us, the next he throws us into a pitch black room with killer droids. I have no idea what that guys is thinking of doing next."

"I don't know either, but I need to go clear my head." She got up and walked of the room. I flopped back on my bed and starred at the ceiling. butterflies in my stomach again.

"I have got to focus." I repeated over and over in my head as I smacked myself back to reality. I sat back up and tried to meditate.

Meditation is the jedi's way of connecting to the force, growing stronger. Calm your mind and focus, thats what they told us at the temple. Build the bonds between you and the force, reinforce the ones you have, and repair the ones you lost. Whenever my mind was clouded by confusion or weak from classes and training I could meditate to heal it. If what Taryn had in mind was anything like what I was guessing I was going to need to be as calm and collected as possible.

T-3 beeped. "Master Kadrin, I have a message for you."

"What is it?" I asked.

"Master Taryn instructed me to deliver this message at precisely 1800 hours."

"Ok, play it." I broke out of my meditation. Taryn's voice played through the small droid.

"Open your closet."

"T-3, that was it?" I asked confused.

"Yes master Kadrin." That was an oddly short message. I walked over to the closet and slowly opened the doors. Inside was an armor suit and a blaster. There was a note attached to the armor. "You're going to need this."


	5. Shadows in the Moonlight

_**Shadows in the Moonlight**_

The sled's repulsers hummed gently beneath my feet. The cold air whipped against my face as I stared ahead of us. The mountain stood high above the trees, daring us to tread upon it, as we came closer and closer. None of us spoke as the sled slipped silently through the dark night. Taryn's voice played back in my head like a recording.

_"Tonight you become a member of an elite group. Tonight you become a member of the republic's deepest secret. Tonight you're training begins."_

I turned the under-barrel light on my blaster on to check the beam. It shone brightly through the whole sled. I switched it off and checked the energy cell, if that ran out my weapon turned into a useless hunk of metal. Everything was in working order. Kal had shown me how to calibrate the sights, I had done it numerous times already on this trip, and I checked them again. I clicked the safety switched off and then on again trying to get the feel for exactly where it was. I wanted to be able to do it without having to think about it. I had never used a weapon like this, it felt in my hand, but I would have to learn. I slipped the weapon back in its holstered.

_"Twenty miles from the city is Mount Crystane. That is your objective. The sled can only take you so high you will have to scale the rest on foot."_

I flexed my arms and legs trying to get used to the armor. Its layers of material covered my whole body minus my hands, feet, and head. It fit incredibly tightly, like a compression suite. Jessen had told me all about it; Super lightweight fiber mesh. The soft material would harden itself when it sensed an incoming object. There was almost no restriction of movement, it could stop some brute force and most small arms fire but it wasn't impervious to everything. Jessen had told me "You still don't want to get shot, just pretend your not wearing armor." The flat black color reflected no light back, at night you were invisible.

_"At the top there are stones. You each need to return with one to the city. It's as simple as that."_

_"How will we know which stones?"_

_"You'll know them when you see them."_

My helmet stared back up at me from my hands. It had a T shaped visor almost like the pictures of mandalorian helmets I had seen in holobooks. I slipped it over my head. It was the barebones of a helmet by most standards, no sensors, no night vision, nothing. All it had was an air purifier and a comlink back to the CRC. I slipped it over my head, the padding made it a tight fit. I still had most of my peripheral vision but it was still odd, I felt top heavy. I had never worn a helmet like this before. It was nice though, I could get my head smacked and not feel it, that was worth the weight.

"_Not everyone has come back from this mission. It's not easy. I'll take you out to the drop point, but you'll be alone after that. It will be up to you." _

Taryn leaned against the control console on the sled. The rest of us sat on benches along the sides. All of us with armor and blasters, it was not a sight I was used to. The jedi never wore armor.

"Yeah but the jedi haven't fought the battles we have." Kal had responded the first time I said it aloud. It was dehumanizing. Before, I could look across the group and see different faces. I could look into their eyes and see into their character. But now all I saw was the same visor staring back at me. The visors were only one way. You could see out but no one could see in. That only made it more strange. The visor couldn't block the force though, everyone still had their uniqueness there.

Jais was the only one without her helmet on. She held it in her hands staring at it. She was nervous, I didn't need the force to tell me that. I reached out with the force to try and calm her. She looked up at me and gave me a faint smile. Her eyes dropped down to her helmet one more time before slipping it over her head.

"You are all asking yourselves the same things right now." Taryn broke the silence, "Why am I here? What am I doing? Why am I listening to him? But by now you have figured something out: you are here because you trust me." he paused for effect, "I haven't lied yet, and my story is the only one that makes sense. All of your other theories have been disproved and now all you can do is continue to blindly follow. I know that's what you're because that's what everyone thinks when they sit in these seats." He stood there looking up and down the rows of armored bodies. I knew he couldn't see my eyes through me visor but I still couldn't look him in the eye. He had hit the mark. Somehow he knew exactly what I was thinking. Even though I was more impenetrable then I had ever been he still made me feel naked and vulnerable.

Then he started talking again, "Would you like to hear a story?" He glanced around the sled, none of us responded, "Once upon a time there were nine padawans." He took on an almost fatherly tone, like he was telling his children a bed time story, "They were enjoying their flight over the jungle when suddenly their sled lost control." A beam of yellow light flashed in front of him as he spun around. Taryn slashed off the control console with one swing of his lightsaber. He smiled back at us evilly, "good luck" then he leaped backwards off of the sled and into the black.

Immediately the sled broke out into a frenzy. Everyone gripped onto the side rails of the sled as it wobbled in the air. It tilted from side to side. I heard a hiss as one of the repulsers went out.

"This sled can still fly without one repulser, we're still ok." Denz yelled above the rushing wind. Then I heard another hiss as a second repulser lost its life, now we weren't ok. The craft started to nose dive down towards the jungle.

"We're going to have to jump!" Kren yelled over the sound of rushing air.

"What about the trees?" Shain yelled to him.

"Let's just hope this armor will work"

I prepared to jump, if I could wait until we were a little lower I could use the force to help break my fall. I hoped the armor was going work. Of course, work or not this was not going to be a pleasant landing.

"Now!"

I leapt off the crippled sled towards the least dense spot I could find through force vision. I focused on slowing my body down and stabilizing myself. The air rushed past my body drowning out all other sounds. The trees grew nearer and nearer as I fell through the air. I must have fallen one hundred feet before I hit the first limb. My armor reacted and stiffened an instant before the impact.

I couldn't count how many branches I hit on the way down. I felt my body hit hard on the ground. The armor reverted back to the soft cloth. I gasped for air, one of the branches had knocked the wind out of me, I fought to regain my breathing. The armor had helped, of that I was sure, but it hadn't helped much. My head was spinning. It took me a few minutes before I struggled to my feet. My body ached from all the impacts. I knew bruises were going to start forming. I took my helmet off, It was still hard to breathe. I tried to use the force to clear my head. It was hard to focus but the spinning slowed some.

I checked for my blaster, It was still locked in the magnetic holster on my thigh. Somehow it had stayed attached through that fall, for that I was thankful. I turned on the light and looked around. I had landed in the middle of a group of trees, broken branches lay all around where I had fallen. I stared straight up to where I had fallen through, there was an almost perfect tunnel through the foliage from the branches I had broken.

I looked for the others' force signatures through the trees. I could see most of them, the others must have been too far. We were scattered over what must have been a three hundred yard stretch. We needed to regroup, we would have to do that before anything else. So I picked the nearest signature and started towards it. I staggered forward, fighting through the brush, towards the nearest signature. As I drew nearer I could make out who it was, it was Vant.

My head was still foggy from the impact. I could just barely make out an alarm bell going off in my head. Something was coming at me. I turned to see one of those lizard creatures. It was identical to the one I had fought before. This time though, I was armed. The creature charged at me, I drew my blaster and fired at it. My round missed. It swung its arm and knocked me into a tree. My armor absorbed the impact. My hand clutched my blaster, I was determined not to lose it. I fired again at the creature before it could turn on me. This time I hit it in the head and it fell to the ground.

I got back up and holstered my blaster. If Taryn had given us blasters then there were going to be more of these. I can not afford to miss that often. The jedi had never trained us to use blasters, other then a few practice rounds in Eldevon's range this was my first time firing one. However, I had a feeling it wasn't going to be my last.

Vant's signature got closer and closer. I started to hear blaster fire from where he was. I sped up. The thick brush slowed me down, but I pushed harder through it. My body screamed at me. My armor didn't flex for every branch, some of the ones that went through hit bruises sending pain through my whole body. I clenched my teeth as I pushed through the foliage. Now I could really hear the blaster. Someone was firing quite a bit. There was a clearing ahead, I could see the laser bolts now. I slipped my helmet back on and drew my blaster.

I broke into the clearing. Vant was back against a tree firing into a swarm of lizards. The ones that he hit dropped but it seemed to do no good. More appeared out of nowhere, an unending stream. I raised my blaster and started to fire into the mob. I hit one in the thigh, it let out a screech but still limped towards us. I hit it again in the chest, it staggered but kept coming. I fired two more rounds into it's chest before it finally fell down.

More came, one after another. Vant and I kept up a steady stream of fire knocking them down as quickly as they came. One, two, three, four, I started to lose count as the bodies stacked up. Finally the horde retreated back into the jungle. I walked over to where Vant was, he looked as bad as I felt. He had a dazed look in his eyes, and I could sense his head spinning like mine.

It was hard to use the force, it was too hard to focus. It was enough of a strain just to try and pick their signatures out of the mess. I had thought about force pushing the creatures back, or throwing branches and rocks into them but I couldn't focus enough to do it. My head was spinning so fast it hurt even to blink.

"Thanks" He said as I helped him up. "I don't know how much longer I could have held out."

"Now we know for sure Taryn wasn't joking." I said as I looked around the area.

"No kidding." he looked back up through the trees, he had made a hole just like I had. "The next time that guy offers to tell us a story I'm leaving." I chuckled.

"He's not one for happy endings is he. We need to find the rest of the group, lets get moving."

We pushed our way through vines and brush as we made our way towards the other signatures. They were just as scattered as we were and it looked like everyone was headed towards the same spot. I had no idea what was there. The jungle was too thick to see anything. I tried to use my vibroblade to clear the trail but it did little good. It cut through the weeds and vines like butter, but there was just too much to cut. The six inch blade barely made a dent in the dense overgrowth.

More creatures came out of the bushes everywhere we went. Not all of them were the lizards either. There were small furry creatures, snake-like things the hung from the trees, giant bats, anything you could imagine. They didn't stop. The more I shot, the more came after us. It seemed to be an endless stream of carnivorous creatures. Was everything on this planet trying to kill me?

One of the snakes dropped down in front of me. I slashed its head of with my vibroblade before it could snap at me. Vant walked backwards behind me firing at anything that tried to come up behind us. His blaster went off more frequently then mine. These things did not want us to get out of here alive.

We pushed our way through for almost an hour before we broke into another clearing. Everyone was closing in on our spot, they weren't far away.

"Let's just stop here and let them come to us." Vant said panting as he pulled off his helmet.

"Agreed." I flopped down on the ground and took my helmet off. Taryn had warned us to only use our flashlights when we needed them, you don't want to depend on it, he had said. Now I agreed with him. A single spot of light would do less good against creatures that came from everywhere. But I turned my light on now. I checked over my armor. The material was scratched p in some spots, I guessed it was from the fall. It was covered in dirt and blood. My blood and animal blood.

Jad and Kren's signatures got closer and closer until they finally burst through the vines and into the clearing. they looked as ragged as Vant and I. Jad fired two rounds into the woods behind them, I could hear something let out a yelp. They both flopped down on the ground next to me.

"I'm gonna kill that son-of-a....."

"Do you have any idea where we are?" Jad cut off Kren's ranting.

"I have no idea where the mountain is, I have no idea where Eldevon is, and no, I don't know where we are." I replied. Jad just flopped down on his back, I could hear him groan in pain.

"Then your about as lost as I am." he breathed. A few minutes later Gron, Haron, and Denz staggered into the clearing. Haron was limping and Gron was holding his stomach.

"How many branches did you guys hit?" He asked us.

"Too many." Kren replied before anyone else could, the rest of us muttered in agreement. Denz popped off his helmet.

"We should probably take inventory"

"What are we now cargo?" Vant joked.

"I meant see who's hurt and who's not. Gron is fine, I'm ok, Haron sprained his ankle. How about you guys?"

"I'm fine." I answered him.

"Im alright."

"I'm good"

"I hurt in places I didn't know I had. But I'll live." Kren complained. "Hey." he sat up as he realized something, "Where are the girls?"

A scream broke the silence. I knew who it was, it was Jais." I sat straight up.

"Over there." Vant pointed into the bushes. There were the two force signatures, they were together at least. The two glowing spots were moving towards us, fast. I concentrated as had as I could. My head had settled somewhat. I could see more clearly now, behind the girls was a mass of little glowing spots, the dots were closing in on them.

Vant, Kren, Jad, and I jumped up and ran towards the girls. We had to fight as hard as we could just to get through the brush. I pushed my way through vines and over logs. I kept tripping over roots and vines as I struggled against the overgrowth. We fought through the jungle until finally the girls were right in front of us. They fell through the a tangle of vines. Jais looked up and screamed in surprise. I grabbed Jais and Kren grabbed Shain. We hauled them out of the brush. I could hear the screeches coming behind them.

"Keep going!" Jad yelled. The two helmets nodded and they took off towards the clearing.

"Alright guys, leap frog it back to the clearing," I yelled to them.

"What the heck is that supposed to mean?" Kren yelled over the increasing noise.

"Just follow me." Suddenly the small glowing spots burst out of the brush materializing into what looked like small dogs. They lunged at us, but we already had our blasters drawn. Kren and I fired into the mess while Jad and Vant dove backwards. They stopped, turned, and opened fire on the dogs so Kren and I could jump back behind them. We leap frogged at least half the distance back until the horde stopped coming. We kept our blasters drawn but walked back to the clearing. Jais and Shain were laying on the ground panting. Their helmet were off and you could see the fear in their eyes. I ripped off my helmet and sat down next to them.

"You alright?" I asked. She nodded.

"Ok, does anyone have any clue which way the mountain is?" Kren asked.

"You still want to go out there?!?" Jad asked shocked. "You're crazy, we've already been attacked and chased for hours. I do not feel like continuing to risk my life for some stupid rock."

"Do you remember what Taryn said? We pass or we die." I challenged him.

"So what, he's going to kill us if we don't bring a rock back?" No one answered him. Would he? Would he... murder us? Just for disobeying him? The question was on everyone's mind.

"Well," I said as moved towards the trees, "I'm not about to find out. "Vant, why don't you climb that tree and tell us where we are." He nodded, jumped up to the first branch, and started climbing up the tall, tree. I walked over to jais. She was sitting down with her helmet off holding her stomach.

"How are you doing?" I asked her.

"I'm ok, I'm just a little beat up."

"Can you focus at all?" She shook her head. "Your head still spinning?" She nodded slowly. I kneeled down in front of her and gave her a smile. "Just relax for a minute" She smiled back at me weakly.

Vant had climbed up probably thirty feet until he was above the tree tops. "I can see the mountain..." he yelled down at us, "And I think I can see Eldevon."

"Here." Denz yelled up to him, "Jessen gave me a compass." He threw it up and used the force to land it in Vant's hand.

"Ok...," he yelled back down, "The mountain is south of here, I'm guessing a mile, and Eldevon is north, it's about..... it's further away."

"Well since we're closer to the mountain we might as well go for it." Kren said slipping his helmet back on.

"I still do not want to fight my way through that madness." Jad said as he folded his arms across his chest.

"Look, we aren't going to be Jedi, even if the temple took us back we're still too old to be accepted as an apprentice. This is my chance to get out of farming for the rest of my life, I'm going to take it." Shain said to him. She surprised all of us. We all stared at her blankly. "I don't want to trust him either but this might be my only chance to do anything with my life." I was startled. Shain had never trusted him. Now suddenly she was willing, in fact advocating, that we go. I picked my helmet up off the ground where I had dropped it and dusted the dirt off the visor.

"I guess that settles it," I slipped the helmet over my head, "lets go."

----{}----

"Fire over there!"

"They're coming around behind."

"Cover me!"

For hours we fought our way through that mile. Flesh eating creatures appearing around every tree and bush. Our blasters were the only thing that kept us alive, our armor held against small creatures, but the larger ones could slash it with their sharp claws. Flashes of lasers lit up the night reflecting off hundreds of eyes watching our every move. We pushed our way through vines and brush firing into the black, often at nothing but sounds. We blasted a hole through forest, a tunnel littered with dead remains of the creatures that hunted us.

Where were we? I didn't know. Denz had a compass, we knew we had to go south, that was it. How else could we tell? The foliage was too thick, and this was new terrain to me. I had no idea if we were still on the right track, or how far we had gone. But it was a mountain, it couldn't be that hard to find.

Soon the terrain started to change. The foliage thinned out and rocks littered the ground. The creatures seemed to make one last push. The larger, lizards bursting from behind us. We walked backwards firing into the mass. We tried to maintain our footing on the loose rocks, using the force to guide our feet over the unstable terrain. The lizards advanced on us, quickly snaking over the rocks. Blaster rounds flew all around them, but still they pressed on. We backed up further, we were going up now, stepping backwards and vertical, higher into the rocks.

Finally the tree line broke and we stood out in the open. The lizards stopped abruptly, they looked up into the rocks, turned, and ran back into the trees. We stood there, our heavy breathing the only sound. We were on an empty, stone face. We were out of the trees and bathed in moonlight.

Behind us was Mount Crystane. The imposing rock monolith stood daring us to attempt the steep face.

"Looks the hard part is over." Kren said as he holstered his blaster. Just as he spoke a massive boulder broke off from the main body and tumbled down the mountain. It smashed at the bottom sending fragments flying in all directions.

"No, It looks like the hard part is just beginning." Shain said staring up at the mountain.

It must have been a sight. Nine youth, standing before such a mountain. All of them armored and holding a blaster. Their armor was torn from claws and teeth. They must have looked like warriors, blood and dirt covered, gun barrels smoking, and those visors, the pieces of glass that were more dehumanizing than anything else I had ever seen. Their faces were concealed but if you could have lifted those shields what would you have seen? Warriors? Or scared children? The black armor matched perfectly against the black stone and they made no sound. You could see no face, and feel no emotion. They were not human, they had momentarily become another creature entirely. They were invisible beacons, the living dead, the treasured forgotten, shadows in the moonlight.

As we drew closer to the mountain it only seemed to get taller. My doubt and my fear rose with it. I had been certain before that a mountain could never grow, but after what I had seen I would not have been surprised in the least if Crystane had gained in height.

Something wasn't right about this mountain. I couldn't put my finger on it but something wasn't right. It was more of a gut feeling, a tugging by the force, than an observation. I grew more and more apprehensive as I drew closer to the mountain. The closer I trekked to the base of the monolith the worse of an idea climbing it seemed to be.

The force flowed through all things, it bonds them, connects them, and radiated from them. What radiated from this mountain was not the peaceful melody of earth and stone but a cacophony of angry shrieks. A venomous mist almost thick enough to be seen rather than sensed, rolled down from it. It was as If the mountain itself was filled with hatred and rage.

Our trek wasn't easy. We had to traverse a sea of loose stone. Haron's sprained ankle made the trip slow. I have to give him credit, he was strong, he pushed through the pain and marched on. Jais stayed with him helping him along the way. Kren and Jad had raced ahead of us I could see hear them goading each other on, to make the next huge jump rather then go around. Gron picked up the rear, huffing and puffing as he climbed over the next obstacle.

Finally we reached the base of the mountain. Kren and Jad had waited there for a few minutes before the rest of us arrived.

"I think I found the best way up." Kren said as he drew a path up the mountain with his finger.

"Yeah but it looks like it's just more of that loose rock junk we've been climbing over." Jad pointed out. "It's like that as far around the mountain as I've looked."

"Too much for you big tough guys?" Shain jabbed. Jad smiled smugly.

"Just trying to look out for the ladies."

"Sure you are." Shain leapt up unto a rock that jutted out about ten feet above us, gave Jad a smile just as smug, and took off up the mountain.

We followed up the mountain, climbing the rocks, sending loose stones rolling back down the face. A rock the size of my helmet slipped out from underneath my feet. I caught myself from falling and quickly looked down the face to see Vant deflect the rock with the force.

"Trying to kill me?" He smirked.

We continued up the slope, Shain, Jad, and Kren bounced from stone to stone ahead of us. Vant and I would use the force to propel us from rock to rock looking for the best path. After going a little way we would stop and wait for the rest of the group, often helping Gron and Haron up the rocks.

Jais stayed right next to Haron the whole time, pushing him along and helping him up. She was so kind. I couldn't tear my mind off of her. Thinking about it made my stomach swirl. Vant's voice disrupted my thoughts.

"Someon...thing on your mind Kadrin?"

"What?" I shook myself back to consciousness.

"Nothing" He smiled at me and kept moving up the mountain. Part of me was confused, what did he mean? The other part of me knew what he meant and I was a little embarrassed. I pushed it away and focused on getting up the mountain.

My head jerked around before I could think. The force had set off an alarm in my mind. But there was nothing, I couldn't sense or see anything. Something had moved of that I was sure, but what it was, or where it had gone. I didn't know. Something was not right about this mountain. Something here was alive.

I heard more small claps as rocked clicked together. I snapped around to the other side of me. Again, something had moved. The rocks beneath my feet began to shift. I Leapt to another rock higher up the mountain, pulling my blaster as I flipped in the air.

"Kadrin, did you move something?" Vant asked me from the other side of where I had been standing. He stared apprehensively down at the rocks, they had stopped shifting. Jais, Haron, Gron, and Denz stood behind him staring down at the same spot.

"Let's just keep going" Jais said nervously. I nodded in agreement and kept going up the mountain. I kept my hand near my blaster.

Eventually we caught up to Jad, Kren, and Shain. They sat, perched on an outcropping watching us climb.

"Is this the top?" You could hear the relief in Haron's voice.

"I hope so, or I'm gonna die" Gron managed to get the words out through panting.

"The summit is just up there, it's really close." Shain said.

"Then let's finish this." I said as I jumped up to the next ledge. I landed on the edge and looked up for my next jump. Then I got that warning, my sixth sense. I grabbed my blaster and scanned the area. The rock I was on started to move. It was moving up.

Suddenly tentacles shot up from underneath the rock. Jais and Shain screamed. My body reacted and I leapt out of the way as they wrapped around the rock. The stone shattered into pieces beneath the tentacles' force. My blaster was in my hand before I landed, but the tentacles disappeared back into the loose rocks before I could turn off my safety.

"What the heck was that?" Kren's question went unanswered. Everyone had their blasters out now. We panned the mountain face, nothing. I couldn't sense them. All I could sense was the darkness emanating from the mountain. It was like that mist clouded my force senses. Whatever that thing was I wouldn't be able to sense it until it was right under me.

"Let's get up this mountain, get the stones, and get down as soon as possible." I said with my limbs still shaking.

"Agreed." Vant said as he walked past me scanning the area with his gun light. We stuck together. A group was better for defense, we could watch every angle. This last part of the mountain took us longer then any other stretch. We walked slowly up the last bit of the mountain.

No one spoke, all of our focus was on watching the loose rocks beneath our feet. Adrenaline raced through my system. My legs still trembled from the shock. What was that thing? Where was it? Were there more of them? Too many questions with too many life-threatening answers.

Finally we reached the top of the mountain. The summit wasn't the loose stone, it was solid. The whole place was littered with large rocks and tall stone spires. I could see a cave in a massive spire, the spire must have been close to fifty feet high.

"How much do you want to bet the stones are in the dark, scary cave?" Jad joked sarcastically.

"From what little I know about Taryn, that makes perfect sense." Denz answered him.

Then it hit me again, an alarm bell went off in my head. I spun around as Jais' screamed. A tentacle was wrapped around her ankle. It was dragging her back towards the loose stone. I latched unto her with the force and tried to pull her back. I battled against the creature with all my might. The rest of the group joined in the brutal game of tug-of-war. I struggled and strained against the beast's strength.

"Hold her." I yelled as I let go of her and sprinted towards the massive limb. The creature was winning the fight, pulling her into the loose rocks. I clicked the safety switch on my blaster and aimed at the tentacle. Three red bolts smacked into it. A loud shriek pierced the air as the tentacle released her and disappeared. I ran over to her and picked her up.

She latched onto me. I could feel her whole body shaking. I holstered my blaster and wrapped my arms around her and tried to calm her down. The others rushed over to us.

"Jais are you alright?" She nodded. Shain put her hand on Jais' back.

"Hey, it's ok now, it's gone." She spoke quietly.

"Uhh," Gron's voice shook, "you'd better look again." I snapped my head around. Two tentacles shot out from the rocks. They crashed into the stone we were standing. I let go of Jais and drew my blaster again. We backed up slowly as rocked rolled off the rising creature. Suddenly it broke the surface and the beast stood up in front of us.

It looked like a massive spider. It had four tentacles instead of eight legs, I could see fangs reflecting moonlight around where its mouth should be. It stood at least twenty feet high. The creature let out another shriek, it was so high pitched it hurt my ears.

I fired into the creature's body, it barely flinched. This did not look good. Everyone was firing now, streams of red laser peppered the creature. It flinched, but plowed ahead through the barrage. I rolled out of the way as it swung one of it's tentacles at me. The tentacle struck a rock behind me shattering it. For a creature that size it moved surprisingly fast. It charged us swinging it tentacles to try to crush us.

I rolled out of the way of another one, I landed on one knee and looked up to see a chunk of rock coming at me. My armor flexed as the stone crashed into me sending me flying backwards. I struggled to my feet after landing hard on the ground.

"Alright, two can play with game." I said through clenched teeth. I focused on the nearest stone, it was the size of a person, and launched it at the creature. It recoiled from the impact and turned on me. I was prepared. I levitated two more chunks and sent them rocketing towards the spider. One smashed into it's head, the other smashed it's leg against one of the spires. It let out another shriek as that leg went limp. It was unstable now, dragging its leg. Vant, Kren, and Jad joined me launching projectiles into the creature. Kren launched a rock disabling another leg. The creature stumbled and fell next to one of the stone towers. I focused all the energy I had on the spire and pulled on it. The stones at the base began to crack as I strained on it. Finally it started to tilt, the spire broke loose and crashed down on the creature.

I sat down on the stone. I could feel sweat running down my forehead. My limbs had been trembling before, now they shook. That had taken a lot out of me, I could feel the drain in my system. I pulled off my helmet and took in a few long breaths.

"I think you killed it Kadrin." Jad said.

"Yeah, that was awesome." Haron congratulated me. I still gripped my blaster tightly. A gentle stream of smoke drifted from the barrel. The light wasn't working anymore, a rock had smashed it.

"You alright man?" Vant asked as he offered his hand to help me up, "That rock looked like it hurt."

"Just a bit." I held up my fingers slightly apart. I grabbed his outstretched hand and he pulled me to my feet.

"So, into the dark, scary cave?" Jad asked.

"I guess so." I slipped my helmet back on as we walked into the cave. Our gun lights illuminated the small chamber. The cave was not very deep, maybe only twenty yards. After that it dead ended.

"So where are the stones?" Shain asked.

"Look here." We turned to see Haron pointing his light at the wall. Other gun lights soon illuminated the whole wall. It was covered in round stones the size of my fist. The stones jutted out from the walls all over the cave. I looked down, they littered the floor as well. I reached down and picked one up. It felt smooth, but other then that, just like any other rock.

"I think these are what we're looking for." Jais said as she examined one, "what are they?"

"Beats me, I've never seen a rock like this," Denz answered her, "and the formation is just odd, how can they grow perpendicular to the wall, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense."

"What's this?" Gron asked, the stream of light shining from his blaster displaying a massive black crack in the floor of the cave.

"I don't care if they're growing, up, down, or sideways; and I really don't care what the big hole is, let's just grab the stupid rocks and get out of here." Jad said as he picked up one of the stones and headed out of the cave.

We all agreed and picked up stones of our own. As I walked out of the cave I thought to myself, "that seemed a little too easy." Taryn didn't seem like the kind of person to just hand these things to us.

"Alright, mission accomplished." Kren said, he picked up a small stone and threw it into the cave. I could here it clack and click off the cave walls, then I could hear it bounce down the hole.

A loud chorus of shrieks echoed out through the cave. It was the same blood-curdling screech the spider had made, but this time there were more of them. The sounds split the air as they spilled out of the cave.

"Kren, what did you just do?" Shain's voice shook as she slowly stepped backwards away from the cave.

"I didn't do anything."

"Well, it sounds like whatever you did pissed them off."

Tentacles began to appear from the cave. The screams emanating from the mouth continued to grow in volume and in number. The sounds drew closer as we backed further from the cave, too scared to turn our eyes away and run.

I had to think fast, we weren't going to just run away, we couldn't move over those loose rocks like they could. There was no way we could fight that many at once. There was no way to run, and no way to stand and fight. Then I had an idea: the spire. These creatures had us beat in speed, size, and strength, but they didn't have the force.

"Help me!" I yelled out as I focused on the spire. I held my hands out, pulling on the spire with all my energy. Kren joined me, straining and pulling.

"What if this doesn't work?" Shain asked.

"We're dead either way," I answered her, "We might as well try." Everyone reached out, pulling on the spire. More tentacles appeared in the cave entrance. I could see the white fangs beginning to appear in the mouth of the cave. I pulled even harder.

Crack! A long break appeared in the bas of the spire. More branched off from it. The spire was starting to fracture.

"Keep going!" I yelled into the night. Our combined force power was starting to win the fight. One of the spiders lunged out from the cave. I dove straight for us. I braced for the suddenly, the spire split. A huge crack ran all the way up the middle and it collapsed in on itself. The weight of the rock, multiplied by our force power, sent chunks the size of speeders smashing into the ground with enough force to break the solid rock they hit. Dust and shards flew everywhere as the cave imploded. The one creature that flew out of the cave was caught in the spray and crushed by a man-sized slab of rock.

But the chaos didn't stop there. Cracks shot out from the crash, the stone we stood on began to fracture. The whole area shook. Our floor started to separate. We were sliding apart from one another. The individual slabs were on began to slide faster, they were sliding downhill. I could have jumped off the rock, but there was nowhere else to go, everything was moving. The stone I was standing on slid further and further until I peeked over the edge of the mountain. All the loose stone began to tumble down the mountain.

"It's a rockslide!" Denz yelled over the roar.

"Everybody hang on!" My voice was almost drowned out by the crashing rocks.

Finally the slab tipped over the edge, I was sliding down the mountain. The slab I stood on acted like a sled, the loose rocks like roller bearings, and I like the terrified rider.

I looked all around me, the rest of the group was having a similar experience. If not for the fact that I was scared out of my mind I probably would have been enjoying this. It probably would have been really fun if it wasn't so life-threatening. But, at least we were making good time down the mountain.

Suddenly a tentacle broke through the rocks in front of me. I leapt out of the way as it crashed down on my slab breaking it in half. I twisted in the air and landed on another rock, blaster already in my hands. Another tentacle shot out from the rock slide. I fired three rounds into it and the tentacle shrank back before two more appeared. I leapt from the rock again, firing at the creature's limbs as more and more appeared. They continued to follow me as I bounced from stone to stone, firing into them as I flew. More and more tentacles appeared, it was getting harder and harder to dodge all of the swinging limbs.

I jumped and danced all the way down the mountain. It was hard to find safe rocks to land on and with them moving it was all the more difficult. I kept going until the tentacles finally stopped coming back. Finally I could relax, relatively.

"Kadrin!" Jais' voice brought me back to focus. My sled was nearing the end of it's ride, a massive mound of rock. I leapt off of the rock before it crashed and I rolled out onto grass. I had reached the bottom.

Once the slide had stopped and the dust had settled I could look around. We had all made it. We stood there, our armor covered in dust, all of us scared stiff. If it weren't for the adrenaline I was sure was coursing through all of us we would be laying on the ground exhausted. I was breathing hard, my limbs shook, and my body ached.

I took off my helmet, I didn't bother trying to catch it as it tumbled out of shaking hands and landed on the ground beside me. Pain shot through my body as I reached my arms up to unbuckle my armor. The buckles unsnapped and I could feel my chest expanding freely. I took a deep breath of the fresh air. My ribs ached, everything ached. With the sun just starting to come up enough light broke through the clouds to create a dim, dreary light. It was just enough to see that my chest was covered in cuts and massive bruises.

"That's um... thats quite a slide." I looked behind me, there stood Taryn staring up the mountain. It's face scarred like a huge chunk had been cut out of it. "I could think of less interesting ways to get back down but I guess it worked out."

"We got your stones Taryn, now how about telling us what the heck these things are." Jad glared at him.

Taryn reached down into the piles of rocks and pulled out a stone just like ours. "They look something like this?" he asked us. We showed him ours. "You got them alright. These are going to be very important for the rest of your life.." He threw the stone at the ground as hard as he could. It shattered. Inside of the stone was a clear white crystal. He reached down and picked up the shiny gem. "These are lightsaber primary crystals, in combination with a colored focusing crystal these make up the core of the Jedi's greatest weapon."

"But we aren't Jedi." Jais was confused.

"No, you aren't Jedi, you are something else. You are something secret, something elite, anyone who knows about us is either with us or dead already. You are a member of a secret society with the power to change the fate of the entire galaxy. You are an Arcni." He smiled at us, " Welcome to the crew." Another sled appeared out of the sky and hovered down next to Taryn. "Now, who wants a ride back? No stories this time, I promise."

I didn't know what an Arcni was, but somehow hearing that felt better then anything I had ever heard before. I couldn't help but smile as I jumped on the sled to ride back to Eldevon, to ride back home.


	6. Colors of the Heart

**Colors of the heart **

"Well recruits you survived your first triple-five. How do you feel?" Taryn asked us in as cheery a voice as possible. Our collective groans symbolized our lack of motivation to form words in response. Taryn hadn't given us a break, after getting back from the mountain we got about three hours of sleep before the first day of our first triple-five. Ilden, one of the arcni I had befriended, told me why they called it a triple-five: "It's three weeks worth of the workout you get at the temple in five days." It felt like it anyways. I had done more more pushups, run more laps, and carried more weight in those five days then I ever had.

"If you think I'm going to let you sit down and relax you're crazier then I am." Taryn had said to Gron when he complained about the laps we had to run. Mile after mile with weighted packs, it was brutal. It was hardest on Haron, his sprained ankle made every step hurt for him. As the days went on his ankle slowly recovered but he still limped a bit which put him behind us.

Some of the graduates had done the training with us, they carried much heavier loads then we had. I had no idea how they moved that easily with loads up to one hundred pounds. Ilden had come up to me one time when I was trying to catch my breath, "Just wait," he said, "Later you get quad-fives, even ten-fives." My heart sank with the thought of that. Kal jogged up next to next Ilden, "I always thought six-twos were the worst." and continued off down the trail.

All the work had made my body ache even more then when I had come down the mountain. I was pretty sure that every muscle in my body was sore. It hurt just to get dressed in the morning. The breakfast today tasted better then any meal I had ever had. It wasn't so much the food but the thought of all the work completed that tasted so sweet. I sipped more juice through my straw and leaned back in my chair. Jessen had told us to get straws at meals, "When your arms are that sore, you can't even lift the stupid cup."

As usual Gron was the only one not done eating. Taryn sat in his chair at the head of the table. Watching us passively. He stood up and starting pacing the room. Just as I was wondering what he was doing another graduate walked into the room carrying a small box. Taryn perked up.

"Ah, there you are. What kept you?" Taryn asked

"Finding these things in that disaster you call a storage room. It looks like something exploded in there." he said annoyed.

"Oh it's not that bad Tain, you just have to know how to look."

"I'd need a laser drill to 'look' for anything in there." Tain grumbled to himself as he waited for Taryn to inspect the contents of the box. Taryn peered into the container, I could watch his eyes jump around the inside of the box as he seemed to count something.

"Yup, you got them." With that Tain walked out of the room leaving Taryn with the box. "I have something for all of you, he drew small wrapped objects from the box. "Remember the crystals you climbed Crystane to get? Well Tain has cut and polished them for you. Wasn't that nice of him? Anyway here they are." He tossed a little bundle to each of us. I unwrapped it ran my fingers over the small, clear gem. It was polished incredibly well and cut perfectly. "These are the primary crystals for your lightsabers, but they aren't much good without a focusing crystal." He pulled out more small bundles. "Each of these have a specific color, and each color has a meaning."

He unwrapped one of the bundles. It was an opaque white. "For Haron: white, the symbol of purity and innocence." He tossed Haron the crystal and continued drawing them out of the box.

"Denz shows us that intelligence can overcome strength. A yellow crystal means intellect and logic."

"Gron earns a silver crystal for his willingness to follow orders and his stability."

"Orange means aggression and a thirst for action, Kren and Shain both have these attributes."

"Jad's dark green means ambition."

"A light blue for Jais means healing and understanding, while Vant's deep blue means integrity and loyalty."

"And for Kadrin a fiery, crimson red." He tossed me a small red gem but offered no explanation. "These are just rocks right now, but charged with the force they can focus a beam of light into an untamable blade, you'll have to meditate on these for quite a while before you can place them in your hilt. They have to be charged with the force to handle the job they have." With that he walked out of the room.

Everyone was silent. We sat in the room all of us staring at the crystals in our hands. I looked down at mine, it stared back at me with all the intensity a lifeless rock could muster. It's surface was smooth as glass, but it was not cut as symmetrically as the other crystal. I had seen crystals before, I had built my own lightsaber at the academy, but I had never seen a crystal shaped like this one, color crystals we had been given at the academy were always long, narrow, and processed. These looked like they had just come out of the ground.

The whole room stayed silent for a minute or two before Jad finally stood up.

"Well, I am going to go up to my room and get acquainted with this little rock." He walked over towards the door. Gron, finally done eating, got up to follow him.

"That sounds like a good plan." Everyone else got up to follow up. I found myself stuck in my seat. I sat there with the red stone in my hands just staring at it. I was confused, why red? Red was a sith color, it had always been. I had seen pictures, watched videos, heard stories, always the sith had a red lightsaber. Now I was supposed to hold one? To top it all off the colors were supposed to have meaning; he hadn't even given me one! What did it mean?

"Are you coming?" Gron's voice broke my train of thought. "Are you coming back up to the lounge?"

"Oh, ah... yeah." I got to my feet and followed him out the door. Kren held the elevator doors for us as we walked down the hall. I stepped into the elevator just as the doors snapped shut behind me.

"So, you gonna go sith on us Kadrin?" Jad asked me with a cocky smile.

"Hey, I have no idea why he gave me a red crystal."

"Well they all mean something right?" Vant started, "Maybe it means something good."

"Or maybe it means he's destined to turn evil."

"I guess we'd better just kill him now and save ourselves the trouble later on then." Kren laughed.

"Ha ha ha, you're all hilarious." I said sarcastically. The doors opened and the lounge laid before us. I walked straight to my room opening the door with the force before I got there.

"Greetings Master Kadrin." I brushed off T3's charming little welcome.

"T3 I need you to keep quiet for a little while."

"As you wish Master Kadrin." The little droid floated over to its corner of the room and settled down. I set the gem on my dresser and sat down on my bed. I stared across the room at it.

The force flows through everything, and in a way binds all things to one another. There was a bond between me and that stone. I needed to clear my mind of everything else and focus on that bond, focus on the force flowing to and from the stone. I closed my eyes and let everything else drift out of my mind.

Nothing. I could sense the rock, I could see a perfect picture of it even with my eyes close but that was it. I couldn't feel it, I couldn't move it, nothing. In the temple when we had been given something to meditate on it had felt different. I could "see" the thing from any angle I wished. I could look inside it, see all the mechanisms, structures, and formations. I could see how it worked and where it's place was. This stone was different, it was like staring at nothing, it just sat there in my vision.

In the realms of these visions reality could be bent, I could lift the object and hurl it two hundred miles without anything happening in the real world. I reached out with the force to pick the object up but I couldn't lift it. I tried harder, but still it refused to budge. In my visions I battled the stone but it refused to move. It was fighting against me.

That was it. Somehow the stone was battling my attempts to penetrate it. Somehow the crystal was shutting me out from connecting with it. Somehow it could fight my force power.

What kind of trick was Taryn trying to pull? It made no sense, a lifeless rock repelling the force. It wasn't the first time my attempts to connect with something had been combatted, other Jedi could do it of course, living creatures could sometimes block my attempts to read their thoughts, but a crystal, a lifeless rock? How it could it stop me?

"Are you ok?" Jais' voice broke my meditation. I blinked a few times to get the blurriness out of my eyes.

"What?" I hadn't understood what she had only that she had said something to me. I hadn't even heard her come in.

"Are you ok?" She enunciated each word. As she looked around the room.

"Oh, yeah, I'm alright. Why do you ask?"

"Something didn't really feel right over here. I could sense something... odd." She looked very suspicious.

"Odd?"

"Yeah. Um, it was probably nothing." She took once last look around the room before she left.

I stood up and rubbed my head. I had a terrible headache, my head pounded. I turned on my sink and let my hands fill up with cool water, then splashed it over my face. My dizziness started to fade as my head reoriented itself. I looked down at my chrono. Six hours?! I had been sitting there for six hours. I couldn't believe it. I had felt like ten minutes. Now I knew why my head hurt so much.

I walked down to the dinning room and ate a quick meal. I tried not to think about anything as I stared passively out the window. My head still throbbed. It was unbearably painful. Like a star cruiser had set a landing gear down on my temple. If I focused my eyes just right I could see my reflection in the window, I looked terrible. Long bags had formed under my eyes and my face was pale. I looked as bad as I felt.

That settled it, I was going to go back up to my room and go to sleep. I passed Vant in the hall as I walked out of the dinning room.

"Kadrin, you look terrible." He said surprised as my appearance.

"I feel terrible too."

"Well you were in there for six hours, thats a lot of energy."

"It didn't feel like it was that long, it felt like ten minutes." He furrowed his brow and gave me a confused look.

"Go to bed man."

"I'm headed there." I grumbled. I rode the elevator back up and walked straight to my room. I flopped down on my bed and fell right to sleep.

My eyes fluttered open, I wasn't in my room. I was on a cliff, high above everything else. The cliff dropped off sharply on either side of me leaving a narrow ridge, just wide enough to walk on. I slowly leaned over and peered off one side. A rock broke loose and tumbled down the face, slicing silently through the clouds below.

I was dreaming. I knew that much. But it didn't seem like a dream, it seemed too real. The wind on my face, the cold on my skin, it was so vivid. The other thing that was odd was that never before had I known I was dreaming while I was asleep. I didn't think that was possible. Maybe this wasn't a dream.

Everyone else was there: Jais, gron, Jad, Kren, all of them. We were all walking along the ridge. I couldn't see where we were walking too. The ridge disappeared into a thick mist only a hundred yards ahead of me. Yet we continued walking, walking further into the fog. Somehow I knew that we had to get there, like it was a mission or something. It's that sense you get in a dream. You know you're supposed to do something, but you don't know why. Despite my confusion I walked along the ridge behind the group.

It was difficult to keep balance. Rocks broke loose beneath my feet every time I put them slightly too close to the edge. It was almost like walking a balance beam, a crooked and uneven balance beam. But everyone ahead of me had no problems. Denz, Haron, even Gron, they had had trouble getting up the mountain, but they bounded along this trail effortlessly. They never had to check their balance, the rocks breaking beneath their feet didn't phase them.

It took me a minute but I realized what was making it so difficult for me to balance, I was weighted down. It felt like I was back in one of Taryn's weight suits, special suits that make every part of your body heavier. It was difficult to raise my arms and legs. As I walked further and further my body felt heavier and heavier. I slowed down, my steps became shorter and shorter as the weight increased.

I felt something in my hand. This whole time my fist had been closed around something, I hadn't noticed it until now. I opened my fingers and a red crystal fell to the ground. The crystal seemed to fall in slow motion, taking far longer to fall then it should have. It bounced and rolled until it settled in front of my feet. Immediately the weight left me. As soon as the crystal left my hand It felt like all the weight was lifted off of me. I jumped in the air to feel the freedom and flexed all my joints. I know what it feels like to get out of the weight suits, the relief to your body, but this felt even better.

I looked down the trail to see the group. Now I would be able to catch up to them. The sight that met my eyes was not what I expected to see. They had been traversing the terrain with ease before, but now they stumbled and wobbled down the path. It was as if suddenly they had lost their orientation and balance. Kren leaned dangerously close to the edge before a sloppy balance check pulled him just far enough back to save himself. Jais tripped and fell to her knees, she pulled herself up and continued to stumble along the trail.

I started to run towards them. I had to help them. I had run only a few feet when a man's voice stopped me in my tracks.

"That isn't going to help them Kadrin." I skidded to a halt and turned around. A man stood against the misty background. He was tall and built. His dark hair matched his drab clothes. He wore an expression of complete self confidence. Whatever this man did he was good at it and he knew it. Something about him looked familiar, I couldn't put my finger on it but I knew I recognized him from somewhere.

"Who are you?" I asked him.

"A friend." he answered simply.

"And just why can't I help them?"

"You can, just not like that." He reached down and picked up the red crystal. He held it out to me. Why did he want me to hold the crystal? That thing had just been weighing me down. I gave him a questioning look but took the stone anyway. Immediately the weight returned. I hadn't braced myself for it, the weight knocked me to my knees. I slowly picked my head up against the weight and looked back up at him. The man pointed down the trail. "Look." I turned around. Jais, kren, Haron, all of them, they were walking casually down the trail. They acted like nothing had happened.

I opened my hand and let the stone fall out. As soon as it left my palm they began to stumble again. I picked the crystal back up and their balance returned immediately.

"What's happening?" I asked the man. He didn't answer me instead he began to step backwards into the fog.

"The burden is yours." He said as he disappeared into the mist.

I woke up. I rolled over to check my chrono: 2:00. The red crystal still sat on my dresser. It almost felt like the rock was looking at me. I rolled back over and stared up at the ceiling. That was the strangest dream I had ever had. Was is supposed to mean something? The masters had told me that the force will often give you visions. Visions of the future, of the past, of some hidden meaning, of all kinds of things. Of course visions from the force were supposed to be clear messages, not enigmatic symbolism and metaphoric codes. I wasn't completely convinced it was a vision, just an odd dream. If it was a vision though, what did it mean?

Counting texture elements in the ceiling only lasted so long before I gave up on trying to go back to sleep. I got up and walked into the lounge, my mind still whirling with questions. The lounge was dark, only the dim moonlight from the large window helped to illuminated the room. Jais' silhouette sat centered in the window, staring out at the moonlit forest.

"Can't sleep either?" She asked without turning around.

"No, not at the moment at least." I walked up and stood beside her. The forest looked very different from this angle. From the inside it was a terrifying place where you were under constant threat and always blind. From up here however, it was s beautiful sea of the soft, white light and dark shadows. Clouds moved across the ski casting their own shadows on the tree tops. It made it look like a rolling sea.

"What's the matter?" She said still staring at the ocean of trees. I rubbed my eyes.

"I just had what was quite possibly the weirdest dream I have ever had. I just get cant get back to sleep without trying to figure it out. Why are you up?"

"Um... I just can't sleep." Jais never responded like that, she wasn't telling me the whole truth, I could tell.

"Really?" I asked her pointedly.

"It's nothing."

"It's something if it's keeping you awake." She sighed and looked up at me.

"This afternoon, I sensed another person in your room."

"Another person? Who?" No one else had been in my room. At least no one that would cause this much confusion.

"I... I don't know..." She was still keeping something from me. I sat down next to her.

"Jais, what is it?"

"It was you." She looked away from me as if she was embarrassed. It was me? What on earth did that mean?

"You sensed me in my room?" I tired to clarify what she said.

"No, I sensed two of you. You were sitting on your bed and someone else was standing there, you. I mean another you, was standing there." She read the confusion on my face. "I know, I know, it's crazy, I was seeing something..." Her voice trailed off as my attention shifted. Pieces of a puzzle began to fit themselves together in my mind. She had sensed someone else in my room. I had seen him too. The man in my dream, suddenly I knew why he looked familiar. He was me.

Suddenly things started to make sense. I couldn't keep myself from smiling as things fell into place.

"... you probably think I'm crazy..." Jais' voice brought me back to reality. I grabbed her by the shoulders.

"Jais, I believe you. Your not crazy, you really did see him.. I mean me. I saw him... I mean me too."

"How is that possible." I stumbled over my own tongue as I tried to form words out of what was going on inside my head.

"It's not me, I mean it is but not me now. It's a future me. Like me in my forties or something. I'll explain it later." I let go of her and headed towards the elevator.

"Where are you going?"

"To talk to Taryn." I answered without turning around.

"At two in the morning?"

"He's awake."

"How do you know."

"Because he's waiting for me."

---{}---

The doors to the elevator opened. Something had told me to go floor fourteen. I had no idea what was there, all I knew was that the force was leading me here.

It was a balcony. An outdoor deck overlooking the central square of the city ringed by a waist high wall. I could see the backs of two chairs in the balcony looking out over the edge.

"You're early." Taryn's voice came from one of the chairs.

"How did you know I would come up here?"

"The same reason you knew I would be here waiting for you. Sit down." I walked up and sat down in the empty chair. Taryn looked down passively into the buildings.

"What am I doing..."

"Shhh" Taryn cut me off without looking up.

"What?" He looked up at me annoyed.

"What part of 'shhh' do you not understand? Now be quiet." He continued to watch the city. I peered down into the empty buildings. Suddenly light filled the main square as several massive spot lights turned on. There stood the arcni. They all snapped around as if the light had surprised them. Taryn laughed evilly. Droids popped out from all over, they streamed from all the alleys and buildings. The graduate's activated their lightsabers and soon the whole area was engulfed in a colored light show. Sabers danced all over the square throwing laser bolts in all directions. A stray blast sank into the low wall in front of me and I jerked my head back. Taryn just watched the fight, his expression always changing with whatever was happening down in the fight.

"See all I did was tell them they were on a 'mission' to assassinate a target. I didn't tell them they were going to get ambushed on the way." His face formed into an evil grin.

"Taryn what am I doing here?" I had to ask it. I couldn't watch the fight, it was too fast for me to watch and questions were burning in my mind.

"There isn't much point in me telling you, you already know why your here." He said without averting his eyes. "Jessen what are you doing? You know he's going to... see that's what you get." He talked to himself like he was speaking to the graduates.

"Why red Taryn?"

"You mean why a Sith color?"

"No. You said they all have meaning right? What does red mean?" He didn't say anything. "I have some burden to bear, I got that part. What burden?" He still did not utter a sound. "What do I have to do?"

"You see Ilden?" He pointed down towards the battle. I looked down into the city and managed to pick Ilden out of the chaos. He was holding a red lightsaber.

"What's he doing?" Taryn asked me. I tried to follow him but it was too chaotic to understand what was going on.

"Fighting?... I don't know it's too fast."

"Red is the common sith color. I imagine they laid claim to it because it can mean 'aggressive' or some reason like that. Or because they just liked it, maybe it matched the carpet in their temple I don't know."

"So you're saying I'm aggressive?"

"No. Most colors have multiple meanings. Like purple for instance; purple can mean romance or royalty. Red has an alternate meaning too. Red, in your case at least, means leadership."

"Leadership?" I laughed. "I think you gave me the wrong crystal."

"No, I'm pretty good about getting it right. Of course there was one time I gave a guy a purple crystal when he really needed a green one. My bad. You have to give me some credit though, ambition and romance are kind of close."

"Taryn I am not a leader." I got up to leave.

"Oh sit back down." He pulled me back down into the chair with the force.

"That is so handy some times." He smiled. "Anyway, I wonder Kadrin, can you tell me what a leader is? Or can you just give me the description that the galaxy wants you to believe?"

"What do you mean?"

"What is a leader Kadrin?" He asked me again.

"Someone who gives orders, someone who tells people where to go and what to do." I just said the first thing that came to my head, I didn't know what he wanted to hear. Taryn stood up and started to pace back and forth. Another laser bolt whizzed millimeters from his head. He didn't flinch.

"While that is completely right, it's also completely wrong." He paced as he talked. "The world would have you believe that a leader is some ruler who sits on a high throne. A leader takes the riches, pleasures, and glory while their soldiers die on the lines of battle. A leader is someone who simply commands their servants to do their bidding."

He stopped and leaned over the low wall. "Kadrin, the leader is the servant." I stared at him with a confused look on my face. "It's a new concept I know, how can the leader be the servant,the leader doesn't take orders that just screws up the chain of command. No." He smacked his hand on the wall. "The leader is the servant because the leader must serve the people. The leader gives the orders, but the orders must be for the peoples good. The leader tells people where to go, but it must driven by a desire to benefit them. The leader tells people what to do so that confusion and disorder does not engulf their society, so that decisions can be made and lives can be saved. A leader bears the burdens of the people so that they can walk freely."

I stared at him blankly. I didn't know what to say. I understood what he said but it took a moment to sink in. As soon as it did fear followed it. Here was this immense duty, this huge responsibility, and he was throwing it on me. I wasn't prepared for this, I'm not a leader. I can't even promise myself that I will survive Taryn's next twisted little exercise. How could I lead?

"Taryn, I don't think I'm ready for this." He walked over to me and put his hand on my shoulder.

"You don't? I do." I shook my head.

"You can get someone else... someone better then me."

"There is no one else. I chose the members of your group very carefully, with you as the leader. There must be a leader. Democracy might be applicable in the political world but when the lasers start flying I can promise you democratic decision-making wont work. There has to be a point to the sword and that point is you."

"And they are just going to follow my orders?" Taryn smiled.

"You'd be surprised." He went back over to the edge to watch the battle beneath us. "You wont be perfect Kadrin, you will make mistakes and they will cost you dearly. That burden is yours to bear. But if you can rise up from beneath that heavy load you will become stronger then you can imagine. Your friends love you now, and they will respect you then. There will be nowhere on this, or any side of the galaxy that they will not follow you. You will lift them up when they fall, you will show them the way when they are blind, and you will protect them when they are weak. They will never leave your side, and they will walk where you direct them. Your light shall be the beacon by which their destiny is guided." He tilted his head back and breathed in a long stream of air.

My mind and my heart were racing. It was excitement, fear, worry, joy, every emotion words can describe somehow contained into one indescribable feeling. It was more fear then anything else. More worry of what would happen, how I could do it. But despite that part of me was convinced I could handle it, or at least I could learn how to do it. It was hard to breathe now. I had to force myself to slow down, calm myself.

"Taryn, why don't you have a red lightsaber?" He picked his head back up, I could sense the surprise. I hadn't thought it was possible to catch Taryn off-guard. It took him a few moments to respond.

"Why would I have a red saber?"

"Well your the leader here aren't you? Does that mean you had a red lightsaber?" He didn't respond for several seconds.

"I lost it. A long time ago." He said simply

"But why not make a new red one?" He slipped the hilt off of his belt and flipped the switch on. The bright yellow beam sprang from the handle and began to glow softly in the night. He stared into the beam.

"To be honest, I still don't know why."

His answer confused me, but I could tell he wanted to end the conversation. So I headed back to the elevator as Taryn continued to gaze into the blade. The doors closed in front of me and my mind wandered back to leadership. I still didn't think that I could just give an order and it would be followed. They aren't just going to jump on my command.

The doors opened again into the lounge. Jais still sat on the window seat.

"You were up there a long time" She said as she turned around.

"Yeah, I just had the longest conversation of my life."

"You found Taryn? Was he really waiting for you?"

"Yeah, he said I was early." I smirked at the thought of that.

"How did you know he would be there? I don't get it." I sat down on the bench and leaned back against the window.

"I don't either. Somehow I did. The force told me go, so I just went. And it's Taryn, he's about the most confusing person I've ever met. Nothing seems to make sense if he's involved in it." Even though I said it, somehow everything made just as much sense as it didn't.

"Did you ask him what the crystal meant?"

"Yeah"

"What did he say?"

"Red means leadership."

"Leadership?" She asked surprised.

"That's what I said. Do you think I can do it?"

"I don't know." She smiled a little, "You'll do a lot better then I will." I closed my eyes and let out a long sigh.

"I just don't know if I can handle it." I opened my eyes as I felt Jais' arms wrap around me. She leaned her head on my shoulder.

"You can do it. I believe in you." It felt like my whole body melted. It wasn't so much the hug that felt so wonderful but somehow it felt like my worries disappeared. I had support, I had a rock to lean on. I wasn't alone. I could feel the warmth of her body and the warmth of her care. I couldn't help but smile. She let her arms slide off as she stood up. "I need to get back to bed." I smiled at her.

"Goodnight." She walked to her room and closed her door leaving me alone at the window. I stared out into the night trying to clear my mind. I had to settle this. I couldn't live with this fear and doubt. I was going to have to accept it and push through. Some how I was going to do it. I didn't know how, but I had to.

I walked back into my room, T3 hummed gently in it's corner as the droid laid in stasis. There sat the crystal. Not surprisingly, it hadn't moved. This time I didn't sit down, I picked the crystal up and held it tightly in my fist.

"You want me to be a leader, don't you?" I had no idea why I was talking to a rock, but somehow the stone seemed to listen to me.

"I don't know what I'll have to do, I don't know where I'll have to go, and I don't know what kind of pain I'm going to have to endure. But I swear, I'll give it everything I have, I'll push until there's nothing left in me, I'll fight till my last breath leaves me." I meant it. I meant every word I said. As firm as my resolve was my mind was still gripped with fear.

"It's ok to feel fear right now." I spun around. Someone else was in the room. I recognized the voice, it was the man from my dream. He stood in front of the door with his arms across his chest. "You have no idea what you are going to face."

"I know who you are. Why are you here?"

"You think you know who I am. You have no idea. You think Kadrin Tryon walks out of this place? Ha! Kadrin is dying as we speak, and as we speak a new man is being born."

"I don't understand." he smirked.

"You will." He pointed at the fist that held the crystal. "You know what it means now don't you?"

"Yes, Taryn told me."

"Do you think you're ready to handle that?" I shook my head

"No. No, I don't think I'm ready."

"Then you are ready." The man faded back into the darkness of the room.

The crystal started to feel strange, it was warming. I opened my hand to see the crystal glowing softly in the dark room. A gentle red light emanated from it. It no longer pushed me away, I could connect to it. The force flowed out of the rock like water in a raging river. I could feel it, I could feel it joining with me. It wasn't power, it was unity. I was bonded to the crystal. I smiled to myself. In reality the color of the crystal meant nothing, it wasn't important by itself, the color was merely a reflection. A reflection of the colors of the heart.


End file.
